FEAR: Origins
by Genoscythe
Summary: Everybody knows what happened during the Origin incident, and everybody has their own idea on what happened after it, but who has ever looked into why the operation was such a failure to begin with? Here lies the untold story of F.E.A.R.'s own origin.
1. A Few Choice Words

**_F.E.A.R: Origins_**

By Genoscythe

Chapter 1: A Few Choice Words

**AN: This 'fic is a finished product, and I'll update it every two days to space out the chapters. Strong language ahead, but since you've played F.E.A.R. I'm sure this is nothing new for you.

* * *

**

"…why was this last op such a total failure?"

"Yes."

"You mean, why two groups of Delta force soldiers and one of my point men couldn't stop an entire battalion of perfectly-synchronized super soldiers from detonating a sizeable chunk of the Auburn district?"

"Exactly, Mr. Betters."

"Geez. Where do I start?"

"Anywhere you like, Mr. Betters. This is an interview, not an interrogation." The reporter flipped open his notebook, nudging an overzealous cameraman out of his comfort zone. Commissioner Betters of the top-secret First Encounter Assault Recon force eased back across the table, not twenty-four hours after the incident in Auburn, Washington. For lack of a better analogy, he appeared as if he had been steadily beaten with a sack of oranges for roughly that amount of time.

There were no visible wounds, but his sagging shoulders and defeated brow suggested that they were all inside.

"Can I speak with you for a moment?" Betters snapped.

"You're speaking to me right now, Mr. Betters."

Betters flinched at the name. "No. Can I _speak _with you."

The reporter sighed, signaling for the cameramen to leave them alone for a moment. As the door to Betters' office slipped shut, the reporter slackened. "What?"

"Why do you have to call me 'Mr. Betters'?"

"Because the cameras are rolling, I have to act professional…"

"It sounds like you don't even know me."

"I'm not supposed to! You think it'll look good for me if everybody knew I only got this interview because I'm your son?" The reporter jerked out a cigarette.

"Don't light that shit when I'm around," Betters warned.

"I have to. I'm a reporter," Betters Jr. explained.

"They make you smoke at the office?"

"That's right. Makes it look like you mean business."

"Well, where are we?" Betters asked patiently.

"F.E.A.R. headquarters?" the reporter responded hesitantly.

"And where is that?"

"I'm not sure. I think we're underground, but after those pills you gave us…"

"Yeah. We're underground. As far as you're concerned, the office is worlds away from _underground_. Now put the damn cigarette back in your damn pocket and bring in the damn cameramen. I wanna get this over with so I can check up on my point man." The reporter dutifully replaced his cigarette.

"Promise to act professional? We only have so much memory, don't want most of it to end up on the cutting room floor…"

After retrieving the cameramen and reactivating their cyclopean baggage, the reporter began again. "Start with the basics, Mr. Betters. Why was yesterday such a failure?"

Betters grunted something inaudible, looking away. The reporter subtly began motioning for Betters to look at the cameras, eventually elbowing one of the cameramen into a file cabinet. Finally, the F.E.A.R coordinator started to turn.

"The facts are these: we weren't prepared. We had no experience dealing with a paranormal threat of that magnitude. We didn't expect the situation to escalate so quickly. We – "

"Did it…" The reporter interrupted. "…have anything to do with your newest member? I heard you put him on the mission straight out of training."

"Are you fucking _kidding _me?" Betters scoffed.

_We're gonna have to edit that out, _the reporter mouthed silently.

"The new point man was probably the only reason we're all still alive. No, it was our veteran, Jankowski, that fucked up. We don't even know what happened to him; for all I know, he might still be wandering around the docks."

"How was it you were so unprepared? How your veteran point man was the first to…possibly die?"

At this, Betters actually laughed. "If you haven't noticed, shit like this doesn't happen too often."

_Gonna have to cut that too…_the reporter simply thought to himself.

"We've never dealt with anything like Fettel or Alma before. Plus, Jankowski's expertise was limited to fixing appliances and blowing shit up."

The reporter hung forward, dumbstruck and unaware that he would have to cut that swear out as well. "You're kidding."

"I don't kid."

"Why did you choose him for F.E.A.R?"

"Because that's all he really needed to know."

"Excuse me?"

"That was basically all we did before this whole Origin situation."

"Again…excuse me?"

Betters leaned forward in a confidential manner. "Believe me when I say that F.E.A.R. was made by paranoid politicians with far too much disposable income. We never had a need for a supernatural investigation team – well, not until yesterday – so to make it seem like our organization wasn't a complete waste of time, they sent us on all these stupid missions that even the cops would ignore. We had our highs and our lows, but Jankowski arrived just when we'd hit rock bottom."

"I thought F.E.A.R. was created by the U.S. Army," the reporter spoke, now on the edge of his seat.

"Yeah, that's the official unofficial story. It's what we tell the people who already know that F.E.A.R. exists."

"Why the deception?"

"Because, as it is, we get tons of free goodies from defense contractors like Armacham who think it looks good for the military to be using their stuff in the field," Betters explained.

"Okay…" the reporter breathed. "I'm still trying to figure out why America needs a group of hardened soldiers to fix appliances."

"Right, so when I said blowing shit up and fixing appliances, I should have mentioned that they were both the same thing."

"Oh my god…" The reporter's head had, at some point, become buried in his hands.

"That reminds me, if this is going to be on TV then I have some choice words for those politicians." Betters leaned forward, grabbed something off his desk and held it up toward the camera. It was a monochrome image of the explosion in Auburn with a tiny helicopter-shaped dot tilting from the shockwave. The dot was circled with black marker, and an arrow pointed from the words 'That's us, you bastards' toward the circle.

Someone else, perhaps a secretary, had scribbled 'lol, Alma' underneath the dot.

"This is where all your time and money has gone, sir. Thank you."

**End**


	2. Trial by Sewage

**_F.E.A.R: Origins_**

By Genoscythe

Chapter 2: Trial by Sewage

"Let's, uh…let's go back to the veteran point man," the reporter suggested. "Give me some details." The cameraman next to him was making an odd hand gesture at a file cabinet on the far wall, but the reporter was more interested in the story.

"Well, if you gotta know…" the Team Coordinator began. The following mental image unfolded in the journalist's head with Betters's higher-than-TV-14 brand of guidance.

* * *

F.E.A.R. tactical officer Jin Sun-Kwon shut the door behind her in such a gentle, practiced motion that one would think she spent all her spare time learning how to gracefully shut doors. The claustrophobic steel room held only a table and a chair attached to a man. 

"Spen Jankowski," Jin began, dropping a hefty folder onto the table. The man started, then cautiously reached into the dim lighting to pick up the folder. Jin slid it away from him. "I didn't say you could read it."

"Apologies, ma'am," the soldier clipped, returning the hand.

"I can tell there's one thing you're really going to like about F.E.A.R," Jin said with a smile. "We don't stand on ceremony, because officially we don't exist. We don't have a public image to uphold, and so far we haven't had a problem with discipline." Jin's tone suggested that this was going to remain so, whether Jankowski cooperated or not.

"Understood, ma'am."

"You'll get used to it." Jin flipped open the folder and bent over the first page. "Delta force, started in the Green Berets…you were chosen for Delta because you have 'an uncanny ability to ignore the idea of consequence and personal endangerment'." Jin smiled at this, but Jankowski couldn't figure out why. She turned to the next page. "Never left Fort Bragg…it says you were recommended for F.E.A.R. by Major Dennison after repairing – uh..."

Jin faltered, and it was Jankowksi's turn to smile. "He called it a supernatural leak in the john."

"Yes, that's actually what it says on the report…"

"Flooded the whole damn base, and I don't mean just the Delta part."

"What exactly made this leak supernatural?"

"It talked," Jankowski replied knowingly.

"What?"

"The crapper."

"_Really_?"

"Hell, I thought if anyone would believe it, it would be you people."

"I believe you, I just don't think I'll ever get used to this job…" Jin began pacing the length of the room. This shortly hypnotized Jankowksi because the room was no more than four paces wide and she had to repeatedly go back and forth. "So, how did you fix it?"

"I flushed a grenade down its throat."

Jin stopped pacing. "That _worked_?"

"It blew the ever-loving fuck out of that toilet…ma'am."

Jin leaned over the table again. "That's exactly the kind of thing we're looking for. Welcome to F.E.A.R."

"Just like that?"

"Yeah. As long as you can stuff grenades into things, you'll do fine. Besides, our last operative was possessed by a toaster oven and we're a man short."

"Well…cool." Jankowski got up and moved into the light, reaching to shake Jin's hand. Immediately, she jerked back. When prompted by a raised eyebrow, she explained.

"Our last operative, had he _not _been possessed by a toaster oven, would have been flayed alive by a sexual harassment lawsuit. Sorry if I'm a little…jumpy."

Jankowski shakily retrieved his hand. "When do I start?"

Jin glanced at her watch. "The next time something paranormal happens."

"What do I do until then?"

Jin cracked a smile, but took several steps backward in case he happened to take it as a sexual invitation. "I don't normally tell people what to do with their free time. I'm afraid I can't help you."

"We're underground," Jankowski observed, knocking on the nearest wall. "How do I get topside?"

"Oh, I'm afraid you can't do that," Jin's smile terminated into a determined pout. "This is a secret government facility. Brass doesn't want _any_ of their secrets getting out," she explained. "Even the worthless ones," she muttered as an afterthought.

Jankowski sighed shakily, and began pacing his half of the room. He hadn't quite mastered it like Jin had, and he found himself repeatedly bumping into the walls. "Tell me you've got, like, a bar or something down here. Right? Maybe some girls?"

"How do you think we got into the harassment suit?" Jin moaned, pinching the bridge of her nose. He was turning out to be just like the last one. Jin was sure that when her mother had said that she would be beating them away with a broom, it was meant to be a positive thing. It definitely wasn't meant to be taken literally.

"Listen…we've got a ping-pong table and a target range. Make use of them until we get a call," Jin suggested, inching toward the door.

"Ping-pong? Of all the tabletop sports, you have _ping-pong_?" Jankowski growled. Without making it seem too deliberate, Jin opened the door and shot through it like a lightning bolt. As the door swung back, Jankowski murmured "It's always ping-pong. Nobody likes fucking ping-pong."

* * *

Two months later, they got a call. Jin was the first to the phone. Mere moments in the future found her jogging down a hallway toward F.E.A.R.'s rec room. She had mostly gotten over her irrational fear of men, but her heart still gave a stutter as she leaned through the doorway. 

"We got a call!" She shouted in triumph. Jankowski paused, holding the ping-pong table in mid-air.

"No shit. I can see the whole place is jumping."

If tumbleweeds could penetrate that far into the Earth's crust, one would have found its way through the corridor passing by the rec room.

"Look, stop benching the ping-pong table and suit up. By suit up I mean at least put a shirt on. Please." Jin shuddered and skipped quickly to the armory. Assault rifles, shotguns, submachine guns, rocket launchers, several different calibers of revolver, and some bizarre experimental weaponry all hung on the walls like trophies. F.E.A.R. got more every day. Arms manufacturing companies assumed that, with F.E.A.R.'s mostly false reputation as an elite paranormal strike force, they would be in the perfect position to test out new guns.

It was like having a celebrity sponsor a pair of sneakers. At F.E.A.R.'s inception, Betters signed off for one of Obregon's hefty repeating cannons, and corporations like Shogo and Andra took it as a sign that the group was open to promoting weapons. The Team Coordinator even had to veto a commercial from Armacham that went along the lines of 'If our Type-7 Particle Weapon is good enough for F.E.A.R. then it's good enough for you!'

As usual, Jin ignored all the weapons of mass destruction and walked straight across the room. In the corner, a rough-hewn metal box full of grenades and .40 caliber semi-automatic pistols sat glumly. While she was holstering a pistol, she heard a cry from the doorway.

"Holy _shit_!" Jankowski exclaimed, quoting the first man to crack open King Tut's tomb in over three thousand years. "This has all been here the whole fucking time?"

"Yes, Jankowski…" Jin answered dutifully.

"Why didn't you tell me about it? I've been working out in the rec room for two goddamn months!"

"If it makes you feel any better…pick a weapon. Any weapon."

Immediately, Jankowski grabbed the nearest gun. It was shaped something like a grenade launcher, but a wide block was attached to the top.

"What's this?" He asked. Jin inspected it closely, firing up her mental database.

"We've been calling that one the Turbo Lover," she finally answered. "It has a computer that analyzes any target's weak points and programs the slugs to home in on them."

"Oh…weak points…" Jankowski turned the oversized revolver around in his hands. "So it's got magic bullets?"

"Pretty much. They're big enough to obliterate anyone's…weak point…in a single shot."

"I like the way it thinks."

"Don't _bring_ it!" Jin cried, running over to him, grabbing the weapon, and leaping back out of arm's reach. "That won't help you for this mission."

_Where the hell are you two? _Betters roared over the PA system. Jin sighed.

"Just grab something and meet us at the briefing room," she suggested, trotting briskly out of the armory. Entering the briefing room, Jin was always surprised at the amount of money somebody spent on F.E.A.R. headquarters. The screen gaping in front of her was the kind that movie stars would own in about ten years, and all it displayed was the bland F.E.A.R. logo.

The short man leaning against the wall next to it eyed her critically. "How's the new guy?" He asked casually.

"He's not much different than the last one," Jin admitted.

"Good, 'cause it was your fault we lost Hank."

"But…the toaster oven!"

"You pushed him into it."

"Oscar…it ate his clothes!"

"Jin, listen to me sweetheart. I think this place is getting' to you. First thing tomorrow, I'll hire a psychiatrist and bring him down here for you. How's that sound?" Betters normally wouldn't have given her the time of day, but at the moment he felt like he needed a psychiatrist himself.

"I'll…think about it," Jin answered shakily.

"Fine. Here's the situation." Betters clicked on a console, and several pictures popped into existence on the screen. They were all different angles of a suburban house. "Guy down there says his couch is movin' by itself. Do whatever you can to make it stop." Betters looked around the room angrily. "And where the hell is the new guy?"

"He's…preoccupied in the armory," Jin told him. "I told him not to bring the Turbo Lover."

"Good," Betters snorted. "He'll probably shoot his own johnson off – or worse, the caller's."

Jankowski took that moment to burst through the door. He would have opened it the normal way, but he had so many guns weighing him down that if he stopped moving he would fall backwards.

"Let's go, let's go!" he exclaimed, pumping a shotgun in the air with one hand and a rocket launcher with the other.

"Jesus fucking Christ…did you empty the place out?" Betters asked.

"Is that the Highlander on your back?" Jin asked.

"Hell yeah!" Jankowski replied, answering both questions at once. "Let's go!"

Jin sighed again. "Come on."

* * *

As if covering his body in deadly weapons wasn't exhilarating enough, Jankowski's adrenaline rose to new heights as the helicopter took them across the city. It was his first breath of fresh air in two months. To pass the time, he was inspecting all of the weapons he had blindly picked up. 

"What's this one?" he asked Jin, holding up a tube-like gun.

"That's the Shogo Akuma, but we call it the Highlander," Jin muttered quietly. "It's a rail gun."

Jankowski looked down the barrel. Instead of a circular opening, there was only a thin slot. "What caliber?" he prodded.

Jin groaned. "Katana."

"This thing shoots _swords_?" Jankowski shouldered the rail gun and looked down the sight. "Kickass."

"Maybe for you." As the helicopter slowed down over a residential street, Jankowski realized for the first time that he didn't know what the mission was or where he was going.

Looking up and down the street, he spotted a manhole near the LZ. _There must be something in the sewers…_he thought to himself. _Ghost crocodiles, or ghost sewer pirates, or ghost hobos, or aliens. _The helicopter lowered itself to the pavement, and Jankowski leapt off one side while Jin slid off the other. The former Delta soldier rolled behind a trash can, aiming the Highlander at the sewer opening. Jin calmly strode across the sidewalk, obscured by the waiting helicopter.

Jankowski ran, hunched forward, to the manhole. Pulling off the cover, he shone his flashlight into the smelly darkness. Jin absent-mindedly kicked a lawn gnome. Flashing a complicated hand signal out of habit, Jankowski gripped the ladder below and slid down into the sewer.

Jin rang the doorbell.

"Are you the police?" The caller asked, ushering Jin into the house.

"Yeah. Furniture division," Jin grumbled. "I'm just here with my partner to…" She looked back as the man closed the door. "Wasn't there someone behind me?"

"I don't think so."

Jin threw the door open to the sound of a grenade exploding under a pile of sewage. Moments later, she heard a twang and half of a broken katana spun out of the open manhole.

Jankowski didn't really know what he was shooting at, but it was big and gooey and coming straight toward him. His first Highlander shot went wide, bouncing off the wall and nearly stabbing him in the face. It was an experimental weapon for a reason.

Throwing the rail gun aside, he pulled out a shotgun. Bits of the oozing monster flew off, splattering on the walls, but it kept going. He emptied the shotgun, and instead of reloading he threw it next to the Highlander and pulled out another weapon. This one just happened to be a sniper rifle. With a snort, he threw it with the other guns. Sniper rifles were for little girls.

Finally, his hands clamped around the repeating cannon strapped to his back. By the time he had it ready, the ooze monster was right in front of him. Jankowski fired blindly, and before he could tell what _exactly _happened, he was thrown back against the ladder. Brownish goo rained down on him and the scattered weaponry.

"Jankowski! What the hell?" Jin hissed. Jankowski looked up to see her face silhouetted by a streetlamp. "What are you shooting at?"

"I…I think it was a pile of shit," Jankowski murmured, still shell-shocked.

"Get up here! Nevermind why you were in the sewer in the first place."

Jankowski clawed his way up the ladder, and Jin slammed the manhole cover shut.

"You smell terrible," she pointed out.

"Big surprise…" Jankowski snapped. The two of them approached the house with the possessed couch inside. Immediately, the homeowner stopped Jankowski.

"He's not getting inside," the man informed them, as if it were already written in stone. "Not on my new carpet."

"Wait out here," Jin told her partner.

"But I'm the point man."

"Here I thought you were the demolitions expert."

Once inside, Jin took a look at the couch. It was moving, all right. It did, however, lack most of the characteristics of a possessed object.

"How do you feel about Jesus?" she asked the couch.

"Christ!" The caller cried.

"If it's demonically possessed, I'm pretty sure it knows what Jesus I'm talking about."

"No, I just can't believe I called 911 and I got you two."

The couch just sat there. Occasionally, a seat cushion would wobble, but it didn't seem to have a beef with Christianity. It didn't seem to have a beef with anything.

"I don't think there's anything wrong with your couch, sir."

"Then how come it ate my cat?" The caller yelled.

"It did?"

"I would know!"

"Well…it _is _moving…" Jin turned around. "Jankowski, do you have any guns left?" She called through the open doorway. Jankowski stood right outside it like a wet dog.

"Just the repeating cannon. I dropped the rest."

"Okay." She turned back to the caller. "Sir? We'll get you a new couch. First, let us deal with this one." The two of them carried the possessed furniture outside, where Jankowski leveled the repeating cannon at it. He fired, and a deafening boom raced down the street in both directions. A slug the size of Jin's head slammed into the couch, and the resulting shockwave blew it in half.

A fine mist of couch stuffing, blood, and fur coated the atmosphere for a moment. The two F.E.A.R. operatives swore under their breaths.

"My cat! That was my cat in there!"

Jin and Jankowski looked at each other. "To Ikea?" she asked.

"To Ikea," Jankowski confirmed glumly.

"And a pet shop!" The caller screamed as they boarded the helicopter. "I want another damn cat!"

**End**


	3. Mr Fix It

**_F.E.A.R: Origins_**

By Genoscythe

Chapter 3: Mr. Fix-It

"How often do you mistake possessed furniture for playful little animals?" Jankowski cried over the roar of the Ikea cart's wheels. Jin sat crouched on the platform, scanning the warehouse aisles for couches.

"Not often, it's usually the real deal," she answered, gripping the edge as Jankowski made a hard right. "What color did you want, sir?" She spoke into her headset this time.

_"The same color as the old one!"_ The caller cried. _"And please…before the wife gets home?"_

"What _was _the old color?" Jin asked.

"I thought it looked like a taupe," Jankowski put in. He couldn't believe he had gone from a revered military unit to shopping for couches in just a few month's time.

"It was too dark for taupe. It was mahogany."

"Mahogany? That's, like, the other end of the spectrum!"

"It's still brown!" Jin countered.

"Why don't we just settle on praline?"

"Hold it! Sofas!" Jin cried. Jankowski dug his heels into the tiles, and the cart shrieked to a halt after skidding halfway across the aisle. Rolling into a pile of tastefully-colored ceramic pots, Jin staggered to her feet and helped Jankowski lift a box onto the cart. However, she stopped as soon as the box came to rest. "Wait. It's the wrong color."

"Fuck the color," Jankowski growled. "Unless Ikea's got a pet shop too, we've got a long way to go."

* * *

"You're telling me you remember all this?" Betters Jr. asked, leaning back in his chair. The cameraman on his right was twitching again, and this time he peeked over the lens.

"Good, she moved…" The reporter just barely heard the cameraman mutter. He ignored it.

"We kept all that shit on record," Betters Sr. replied. "F.E.A.R. operatives have little cameras on their shoulders. We used to put up clips on the internet. That thing with the cat and the sofa got a four star rating, 'cause you could pause it right before the slug hit and see the cat peeking out from under the cushions."

_I'm just gonna cut that for ethical reasons…_the reporter mused. "This sounds nothing like what I've heard about F.E.A.R. Are you telling the truth?"

"Well, what _have _you heard about F.E.A.R?" Betters countered.

"Uh…" This was much harder to answer than Betters Jr. thought it would be. "It's a paranormal response team. Very secretive. Very off-the-record stuff."

"Yeah. Well, nobody knows we used to spend our time buying couches and literally blowing shit up, so I guess we've been pretty secretive and off-the-record, haven't we?"

"I guess…" The reporter looked to his cameramen for help, but neither of them were trained for that sort of thing. "Look, just keep going. I want to see these records when we're finished."

"You got it, champ."

* * *

Not very many people choose to work as a cashier at a pet shop. There are people who, of course, enjoy the company of animals so much that they can withstand breathing in toxic amounts of animal waste just to have a few poodles nearby at all times. There are other people who think that a pet shop is the last place in the world anybody would want to rob. The latter are paranoid people who have seen too many movies and believe that most stores are robbed on a daily basis, especially in Los Angeles.

Reagan was a paranoid person. He nearly jumped out of his mortal coil when the front door of Mick's Pet Heaven blew inward. Out of the smoke, a man in a soiled white uniform rushed by the counter. He was holding a massive gun out in front of him. Reagan the Cashier, frozen in place, stared at the wall until the man ran back in the opposite direction cradling something that mewled.

All was still, until someone else walked casually through the doorway and slapped a wad of cash on the counter.

"Sorry," a Korean woman murmured, herself wearing a green version of the man's uniform. She turned around and strode calmly out the door. When Reagan's hearing started to come back, he could swear that he heard a helicopter taking off outside.

"C-4? Honestly," Jin groaned as Jankowski stroked the orange tabby's head.

"It's a military thing," Jankowski explained defensively. "Why did you have to pay the guy?"

"Because we took one of his cats!"

"What's the point of working for the government if we have to pay for stuff?" As he spoke, he failed to notice the cat licking some grime off of his glove. It coughed once, then pitched over the side of the helicopter. With a swear that could shatter stained glass, Jankowski ordered the pilot to go back to Mick's Pet Heaven.

Reagan hadn't moved, but his face was wet with tears as Jankowski swept through the store again. There weren't any more cats on display, so the soldier rammed the butt of his cannon on a cage door until it came open. As he left with a calico under one arm, he stopped in front of the register.

"You don't even keep a fucking shotgun under the counter?" Jankowski reprimanded. "Grow a pair!" he roared as he jogged back to the helicopter waiting in the street. Reagan collapsed.

"I'm done with this shit," Jankowski mumbled on the return flight. "Send me back to Delta."

"We can't demote you if you haven't done anything wrong!" Jin protested, hugging the newest cat tightly to her breast. This just gave Jankowski a very off-set grin. With determined ferocity, he grabbed the cat out of Jin's arms and chucked it out of the helicopter.

"There. I did something wrong. Now kick me off the team."

Jin gave him a withering glare. "That was disgusting. You feel terrible about it."

"Yeah, I do."

"You're going to buy that man a new cat yourself."

"Yeah, I should."

"And you're definitely not going to quit the team."

"I'm not?"

In the end, the helicopter made a third trip to the pet shop. This time, Jankowski simply applied a cutting torch to the problem and emerged with an entire store display. However, he found the pilot's seat empty and Jin showed him the quickly-scribbled resignation note. It read along the lines of 'FUCK YOU _AND_ YOUR GODDAMN CATS.'

Jin flew the helicopter back herself, lowering it so that it nearly touched the ground and allowing Jankowski to shove the couch and the cat onto the pavement without serious damage to either. He had taped the pilot's resignation notice onto the Ikea box, because it was just as appropriate then, if not more so.

After flying aimlessly for half an hour, the helicopter descended of its own volition onto a random hilltop in the outskirts of town. Instead of landing on solid dirt, the helicopter kept going down as the hill opened up beneath them.

"Isn't this place a secret?" Jankowski asked from the passenger compartment. "Won't I know where it is now?"

Jin shot a look back over her shoulder. "Do you?"

The point man hung his head. "I lost track."

Jin nodded. "It's been on autopilot for the last half hour. It's designed to keep us disoriented."

"That's so…" Jankowski dug for the word in his vocabulary, buried under all the easier words like 'fuck' and 'shit' that pretty much covered anything a military man ever needed to say. Finally, he found it. "…needlessly complicated."

"Well, you know why F.E.A.R. exists, right?" Jin asked conversationally as the helicopter spiraled into darkness.

"No. Hell, I never even thought about it."

"You wouldn't, right? The government needs people to do the dirty jobs. The special jobs. Why _wouldn't _they have people to do the supernatural jobs, too?"

"Exactly, but if there aren't any supernatural jobs…"

"Here's how it happened. Some senator caught Ghostbusters on TV and he thought 'wow, ghosts, I'd better get someone on that.' And then he did. That someone is us."

"Just like that?"

"He's the kind of person that hires other people to watch his house for burglars. To him, we're probably just watching his country for burglars that normal guards won't deal with."

"Bullshit."

"Probably. But where else is this funding coming from?"

Jankowski noodled this for a moment. Fortunately, before he could come up with a wrong answer, the walls opened up into a gigantic hangar full of helicopters and jets. The senator obviously hadn't counted on hiring a total of two field agents and one pilot for his new organization.

_Jin! Can you hear me? _Betters's voice sizzled through the helicopter radio. _We've got another call. Rick, turn that bird around._

"We're landing right now, sir," Jin answered.

_…huh? Where's Rick?_

"He resigned. Vulgarly."

_Well, fuck me. You said you're landing?_

"Almost touching the ground."

_I'll reverse the autopilot. There's a situation going down near Ravensdale. Water heater's gone nuts, started pukin' hot water everywhere. Won't let anybody near it. What's the new guy armed with?_

Jankowski was about to say something he would regret, but the helicopter lurched upward and the words caught in his throat. It was going much faster this time.

_This is the real deal. The water heater wants 'em to sacrifice a virgin to it. You'd better be able to blow that thing to high hell._

"We'll take care of it," Jin assured him.

_It's not really high hell, is it? 'Cause that doesn't make sense._

"I don't think that matters," Jin spoke calmingly.

_You're right. I'll put in the address. _Shortly, a row of numbers appeared on the pilot's GPS monitor.

"Got it. We're en route."

_You make it sound so official. You're just blowing up a fucking water heater._

"Let me humor the new guy," Jin muttered dryly. Jankowski, now absorbed in spinning the barrels on the end of his repeating cannon, had lost interest. When they landed on the roof of an apartment building near Ravensdale, he decided to follow Jin this time.

Guided by Betters's voice, they made their way to the basement, where a crowd of people were blocking the entrance.

"Excuse us," Jin offered politely. "We're here to fix the water heater."

The man who had established himself as the Alpha Male of the situation sidled up to her. "Lady, this appliance don't need no fixin' 'cause it can't be fixed. It's been shoutin' offensive things to our womenfolk, an' I just called a priest."

"Oh yeah?" Jankowski barked, pushing past Jin and instantly establishing himself as the Guy Who Wants to be Alpha Male. "You've got better than a priest."

"What, _you_? An' who the hell're you?"

Jankowski whipped the repeating cannon out from behind his back. "I'm the repair guy."

The Alpha Male jumped backward, as if slapped – proving that, if you have a big enough gun, you don't even need to fire it to reap the benefits. With the tip of the barrel, Jankowski pushed the fat man aside and descended the stairs. Less than halfway down, a gargling roar could be heard resounding off the walls.

"Ahahahaha! Won't bring me a virgin, huh? Let's see how you cunts like drowning in boiling water!"

"Just follow my lead," Jin told the new point man.

"What the hell does that really mean?" Jankowski asked. "It's a pretty vague order."

"Alright. Don't shoot it until I tell you to," Jin clarified. With the same grace that Jankowski had observed when she first opened the door to the interview room, Jin slipped through the basement door. It glided back toward Jankowski, but he violently kicked it open again.

Switching on her shoulder lamp, Jin swept the basement. Shelves, washing machines, and less identifiable debris were scattered all across the soaking floor. It seemed the water heater was insecure about its position in the basement appliance hierarchy.

The possessed device itself lay against the far wall, and if Jankowski had doubted the existence of evil spirits before, he wasn't going to think twice about it now. The water heater _loomed_. A ragged gash split it nearly in half, and whenever it laughed water sloshed out of it. Two more cracks formed what could only be eyes, and a mass of pipes snaked out of the top like Medusa's hair.

"Whoah, hey!" The water heater chuckled, the two cracks opening wide and spilling crimson light into the room.

"Don't shoot it yet," Jin muttered. Aloud, she said, "Having some fun with these poor people, are you?"

"One o' them Viet_nam_ese?" The appliance gargled, going out of its way to guess the wrong nationality and pronounce it as badly as possible. "Or maybe Taiwanese? I love Asian food."

"How about Jesus?" Jin asked, taking a brave step forward.

"Why do you care?"

"Just curious."

The water heater's eye cracks narrowed, and it chewed thoughtfully on itself for a moment. "I've got an idea!" It finally burst, gushing pent-up water out of its mouth. "I'll tell you…what you want _me_ to tell you if _you'll_ say 'me love you long time.' Eh?"

_Aw, shit, _Jankowski thought. _She's not gonna do it._

In front of him, Jin hesitated.

"Why are we asking, again?" Jankowski questioned her.

"Because we have to be sure," she replied under her breath. "Don't tell me you already forgot about the cat."

"Yeah, well I'm pretty fuckin' sure that that's the real deal."

"I don't want to jump the gun again. If this is a bona fide demonic entity we're dealing with, then we won't owe these people a new water heater."

"Well, then say it!"

Jin gulped, and took a step forward. "Me…love…you long time," she stuttered.

"Really? Whoooooo!" The water heater whooped, waving its pipe-tentacles in the air.

"Alright. Now, can you – " Jin was cut short as the water heater stuffed a pipe into her mouth. Before Jin could scream or even turn red, Jankowski was firing so many slugs that the repeating cannon's barrels were glowing. Each shot punched a clean hole through the water heater, crashing into the brickwork and throwing out minute shockwaves with every impact.

The tentacle dissolved into papery bits in Jin's throat, as well as the entire water heater. Jankowski dropped the repeating cannon, partly because he was confused but mostly because the barrels had fused together.

"What just happened?" Jankowski asked as Jin rummaged through the debris for a ladylike place to throw up. Once she did so, she turned to glare at him.

"Astral projection!" She cried. "That was a hallucination!"

Jankowski caught an ashen speck floating through the air. "So the real one is probably right behind me."

"Dunno." Jin aimed her shoulder lamp at the wall behind Jankowski. The water heater, sans glowing eyes or tentacles, sat knowingly. "Yeah, it is."

Jankowski failed to escape the first blast of projectile boiling water, but once he was writhing on the ground in agony he managed to avoid the second volley and get behind a washing machine.

"Jesus Christ!" he cried, rolling on the floor as if to put out a fire.

"Oh! For your information, I'm not your good ole' Christian demon," the water heater announced. "I got no problem with Jesus. Hell, I was just the janitor here before a mob lynched me, thinkin' I gave their kids nightmares."

"It's a wandering soul," Jin informed her prone ally. "I can usually sweet-talk these ones into going away."

Jin stood up. The water heater bubbled curiously, loosening the valve it used to spray water on Jankowski.

"You must be very angry," Jin began. "But revenge can only go so far. I guarantee you'll feel better once you move on."

"Ha! Haha! I feel great right now! I just got deep throat from a Japanese chick!"

This time, Jin turned red. She also ripped a grenade off of Jankowski's belt and rolled it across the floor. It came to rest underneath the possessed water heater.

"Lady, are you craz – " The next few seconds were filled up by a deafening boom, and the ones after that featured dust and caulking raining down on the two F.E.A.R. operatives. Somehow, Jin remained standing.

"Whoah," Jankowski felt it was necessary to say. There wasn't much else to do. "That's something I'm gonna need counseling for."

Jin shook the dust out of her hair. "Try doing this as long as I have."

_Did you get it, Jin? _Betters asked.

"Yes, sir." Jin paused, looking at Jankowski, who had been trying very hard to pretend he was in a respectable military unit all night. "Threat neutralized."

_You okay, Jin?_

"Yes. I'm just trying to make Jankowski feel more at home."

_…who?_

"The new guy, sir."

_Oh, _that's _his name?_ Betters asked innocently. Jankowski growled under his breath, standing straight as several tenants ran down the stairs. Led by the Alpha Male, they stopped short when they saw the smoking crater in the corner. The stunned silence was unbearable, and Jankowski felt like he should say something anyway.

"Now, _here's_ your problem right there," the F.E.A.R. point man kicked a chunk of brick and pretended to hitch up his pants. "You don't even _have_ a goddamn water heater."

**End**


	4. In Five Minds

**_F.E.A.R: Origins_**

By Genoscythe

Chapter 4: In Five Minds

"Okay, I understand this Jankowski wasn't prepared to combat Fettel and his clone soldiers, but what about the tactical officer?" The reporter pressed on. One of the cameramen sighed and moved his camera over to the right.

"You mean Jin?"

"Yes. She sounds…less than stable."

"That depends. Before the meds, or after? 'Cause she's been great for the last month or so – "

"I – I mean before. Why did she have such an irrational fear of sexual contact?"

Betters Sr. eased back in his chair, chewing thoughtfully on a pencil. "You know what? I'll bet it was the MPD."

"Multiple personality disorder?" The reporter asked, just to make sure they were talking about the same MPD.

"That's it. See, she had it coming into the group. But I didn't think it was a big deal. You know why?" Betters suddenly leaned in dramatically.

"I hope I'm going to find out."

Betters grinned, accidentally snapping the pencil in his mouth. "Because all five of her personalities were exactly the same! Ow."

Betters Jr. started laughing, and it took a nudge from a cameraman to make him stop. "I don't believe this."

"But you believed me about the goddamn water heater."

"I'm reserving judgment until I see the records. But you have no way to prove _this_…how can you even tell?"

"Whenever she talks about herself, she uses plural shit, like we and us."

"Is she British?" One brazen cameraman asked. They thought the interview was getting so weird that if the crew started asking questions it wouldn't make a difference.

"Are you kidding? British and Korean mixed? No, she's a full-blooded American," Betters confirmed. Betters Jr. decided not to delve too deeply into that sentence.

"Did you at least get a professional to examine her?" The reporter continued.

"Yeah, after the exorcism. But that wasn't too long ago. We just knew."

"So…what does this have to do with her fear of sexual harassment?"

Betters spit out wood bits and leaned back again. "Right. See, because there's five Jins in there, when all five of 'em agree real strongly on one thing, it drives her a little crazy. Our point man before Jankowski was a guy named Hank Johnson. He wasn't even a soldier. Hell, I think he was a mechanic."

The reporter looked at him dubiously. "So why did you pick him?"

"Because he wanted to be in the military, but he couldn't pass the physical. Some kinda hereditary problem, I dunno."

"I take it you don't have any prerequisites at all for joining F.E.A.R?"

"Only that you know about appliances or blowing shit up. Now, can I continue?"

* * *

Jin Sun-Kwon hadn't been a F.E.A.R. operative for very long, but she had been there long enough to know the ropes. Respond to a call, locate the supernatural disturbance, drop a grenade or shoot it until it stops being supernatural. This was mostly the job of Hank Johnson, her superior by about two weeks. Rank and experience in F.E.A.R. were measured mostly by time spent in the force, because it wasn't individual actions that defined you so much as a steely resolve and unwavering mental stability.

She had joined because it paid better than being a Naval flight coordinator, and it was supposedly a lot easier. So far, all she had done was watch Hank blow up an in-sink-erator and finish a pile of crossword puzzles.

_I think it's doughnut, _Jin 5 mused as Physical Jin tapped a pencil against her clipboard.

_It's probably doughnut, _Jin 4 pondered.

_There's no reason why it _shouldn't_ be doughnut,_ Jin 3 decided.

_The answer is doughnut! _Jin 2 declared.

_I'll carve it into the goddamn table! _Jin 1 roared, etching in an eight-lettered word that was a 'round pastry with a hole in the middle'. Having already completed the other word on the crossword puzzle, she tossed it amidst the others.

Stretching out on the ping-pong table, Physical Jin reached for another crossword puzzle, only to find thin air and the surface of a ping-pong table.

"Hey, Hank!" she called. Within moments, a strawberry beard growing out of a baseball hat appeared in the doorway.

"Yeah?" Hank Johnson asked.

"We're out of crossword puzzles. Think you can make up some more?" Now that the reporter knew Jin spoke in plural, his mental image adjusted accordingly.

"What, already?"

"Find us something else to do, and we might not finish 'em so fast."

Hank probed her words to see if they contained any hint of a proverbial starter's pistol. Unfortunately for Hank, her sentence seemed all too innocent.

"There's not a whole lot you can do with two people trapped underground together." He tried anyway.

"Oh yeah? We've got something for you to do," Jin began. Hank's expectations curved steadily upward. "Take out the trash. Oscar's growling."

Hank's expectations lowered again, sheepishly.

It wasn't that they needed to take the trash out very often. Four people (including Betters and Rick the Pilot) didn't create much trash, especially since three of them were healthy military-trained athletes. Even though Betters generated enough potato chip bags and candy bar wrappers for the four of them, F.E.A.R. headquarters was designed to accommodate an entire task force.

The only real reason Hank had to take out the trash was because their gigantic, highly-advanced waste disposal system was possessed, in an amazing display of irony. Occasionally, it got hungry. This presented a difficult situation for F.E.A.R., for while they had plenty of trash cans and useless rooms to dump waste in, they would _eventually _need to use the garbage disposal. Blowing it up was out of the question, and it was way too expensive to replace.

Since nobody in F.E.A.R. actually knew how to perform an exorcism – or if it would work – they created a sort of symbiotic relationship with the entity, whom they named Oscar. They fed him their garbage, and he resisted the urge to eat the entire base as a token of gratitude.

Hank Johnson was able to fill a whole trash bag by simply picking bits off the floor in Betters's office, and soon he was off to see Oscar. Located even further underground, at the bottom of a winding staircase the wide garbage disposal chamber gaped for Hank. In front of him, a row of conveyor belts trundled exhaustively into the mouth of a giant metal edifice.

It used to be the master computer for F.E.A.R.'s waste removal system, but after Oscar possessed it, he changed it into a bushy-eyebrowed face. One could tell they were bushy because of how big the slabs of metal were.

"Hey there, Oscar…" Hank greeted uncertainly.

"Feed me, Hank!" Oscar replied testily. Hastily, Hank threw his trash bag onto a conveyor belt and it fed into the receptacle at the base of the column. Oscar's headlight eyes narrowed. "More!"

"That's it. Four people don't make a lot of trash," Hank explained. Without warning, a tongue made of garbage lashed out of Oscar's mouth and wrapped around Hank. "Hey, we had a deal!" He managed to get out before Oscar pulled him into the waste receptacle.

* * *

None of the Jins had heard from Hank in at least five minutes. Five plus five plus five plus five plus five equaled twenty five, so when the Jins finished adding up the time they leapt off the ping-pong table. Rushing to Betters's office, they knocked the door open.

"Hey, have you seen Hank?" she asked the man himself, spinning idly in his computer chair. "He's been gone for twenty five minutes."

"That's impossible," Betters murmured. "He was picking shit off my floor about five minutes ago."

"Then what was he doing before?"

"I don't know! Get the fuck out of here, I'm busy."

"No, you aren't," the Jins pointed out matter-of-factly.

"Check with Oscar, he might know what happened."

"That's what we're afraid of," they muttered. Hurriedly, Jin traversed the stairs and ground to a halt before the giant metal column. "Oscar, where's Hank?"

"Hold on…" Oscar spoke reassuringly. "There." In a burst of motion and the gooier types of garbage, something flew out of Oscar's mouth and straight into Jin. As she fell back against the stairs, it coughed a banana peel into her face. "I get food, you get life. Deal is deal."

Jin finally realized that that something was Hank, and he was stark naked. Hank realized this too.

"Jin?" He murmured, because it's hard to form longer words after having your clothes carefully eaten off of you by a possessed trash compactor. The moment sparked something in him, and he could feel his expectations rising exponentially. However, as all five of the Jins began to take stock of the situation, he wanted nothing more than for his expectations to disappear completely for awhile.

_Oh my god, Oscar ate his clothes, _Jin 5 gaped.

_He's naked and he's on top of us! _Jin 4 cried.

_Is he copping a feel? _Jin 3 wondered.

_He's groping us and he's got a hard-on! _Jin 2 shrieked.

"RAPE!"Jin 1 screamed aloud.

"What?" Hank murmured hazily as he received a kick in the stomach. Rolling off of Jin, he hadn't even gotten his bearings before a broom lanced down from the heavens and cracked over his head.

"We're being attacked!" The Jins wailed as they jabbed Hank in the ribs.

"Hey, stop it!" Hank yelled, scrabbling to his feet and adjusting his baseball hat. Oscar could have sworn he ate it, but it had somehow reappeared on the stocky man's head.

"Hank, we thought you were better than this!" they breathed, waving the broom to get some distance between them. "How long have you been planning to make a move?"

"Well, I – " Hank was cut off by a scream from Jin, who threw away the broom and dashed up the stairs. The point man sighed, but he soon found something to celebrate about: he hadn't taken a hit to the happy sack. It was almost inevitable in a situation like that, but it hadn't happened.

Despite being naked and covered in trash and probably facing sexual assault charges, Hank leapt in the air and clicked his heels. Subsequently, Oscar spit out a waffle iron that scored a bull's-eye.

"It had to happen," Oscar explained as Hank dropped to his knees. "I seen it on comedy shows all the time."

* * *

Three weeks later, F.E.A.R. received the call that would change Hank Johnson's life forever. Location: Auburn. Objective: Demonically-charged toaster oven. Threat level: Not that high.

Jin had grown up a lot since the incident with Oscar. They still refused to talk to Hank, and they were still pushing for a sexual harassment lawsuit, but they did their duty anyway. He admired them for that, right up until they pushed him into the toaster oven.

It was night, as it usually was during a possession. The building was located in the slums, and the owners of the toaster oven prized all their superfluous gadgets. They didn't want it destroyed. Hank even explained to them the number of bagels that a possessed toaster oven could potentially burn, but that didn't matter. An appliance you didn't need was a status symbol in the slums.

"What will the neighbors think?" The frazzled wife bleated.

"They'll thank you for getting rid of the noise," Hank rejoined as the toaster oven trays started rattling again. Jin was inspecting it closely.

"So what's really wrong with it? We can just take it to a hardware store," the equally fatigued husband grunted.

"No. I'm sorry. This is police business."

"What makes it police business?"

"Well, you called and told us that your toaster oven was spouting obscenities. Is that correct?" Hank had watched a lot of cop shows in the hopes that, one day, he would be able to imitate them. He was one of the few F.E.A.R. operatives who actually enjoyed his job, because it was the closest thing he could get to being a hero.

"Yes sir, it is. But it's just a toaster – "

"Where were you when you first discovered the oven was capable of speech?" He rattled off the list of Good Police Questions in his head. "Were you alone? What was the weather like?"

"Now how is that relevant?"

Hank blinked, and realized that he had never heard that one on Cops before. "It's not. Nevermind. Let me talk with my partner." He turned and strode to Jin, who pretended not to see him. "What kind of spirit are we dealing with, Jin?"

Jin replied by staying motionless.

"Have you tried to make contact?"

Jin cocked their head, apparently studying the toaster oven. Hank sighed, laying a hand on her shoulder. He had been cooking this one up for a long time.

"Listen. I think we should try to patch things up, between the two of us. We can't work like this. People need machines to make their lives easier, and we're the only ones who know what's happening to them. They're using appliances to get to us, these spirits. I think they've got something planned…like a hostile takeover of the living realm." Hank particularly liked this idea, whether there was evidence to support it or not. It just made it a little easier to believe that he was doing humanity a big favor.

"Now, the people we're saving, they may not know what we're doing for them. They may not know that we're the only thing standing between them and a demonic invasion. They may not even know our names, but _damn it_, we've got a job to do. Are you with me, Jin?"

Unfortunately, while Hank made his moving speech, the Jins were too busy discussing the situation of his hand on their shoulder to pay attention. In the end, they decided it was rape again.

Jin slipped under Hank's arm, kicking him in the back as she went. The F.E.A.R. operative stumbled forward, grabbing for support and finding the edges of a toaster oven. The room was still for a moment, discounting Jin as she cracked her head against a cupboard. And the curtains, those were moving too. Getting technical, all four of the humans in the apartment were moving at least slightly.

Then, something that shouldn't have broken the stillness did. The toaster oven's door popped open, and it made a ding as if food was ready. The door swung up and down as it began to laugh.

Hank tried to jerk free, but the laughing machine had him hypnotized. Such a human motion in such an inhuman device…

"Jackpot!" The toaster oven cried, and he finally broke free. But it was too little too late. A thin bolt of light, like an electric shock, snapped from the toaster oven to Hank's temple. The rest of the footage from Hank's camera, according to Betters, was obscured by static.

* * *

"_So_?" The reporter sputtered.

"So what?" Betters replied evenly.

"His camera 'got all staticky' and…then what happened?"

"He went batshit crazy. Lots of possessed people do."

"What did you do with him?"

"I set him up at a nice mental home. Don't remember which one, but it doesn't matter. You wouldn't be able to interview the guy."

"Jin doesn't know, does she?" The reporter prodded, and soon after realized how strange it was to be asking personal questions about someone he'd never met. From all of Betters's stories, it almost felt like he knew her by now.

"No. Matter of fact, I think that cupboard knocked a few Jins loose. Ever since then, she hadn't been taking as long to make decisions. She definitely didn't freak out as much."

"So she just thinks he disappeared."

"I never asked," Betters chuckled. "I don't give a shit what she thinks." The reporter bit back the urge to reprimand him, and instead tried a new angle.

"How did Mr. Johnson know all that about a demonic invasion?"

"Hell, I don't know. You could try asking him now, but like I said, you won't get far."

Betters Jr. sighed, slumping forward in his seat. "So you don't know anything that would be good for a news report."

"No."

"That's fine – it'll go well with everything else you told me so far."

**End**


	5. Healthy Exorcising

**_F.E.A.R: Origins_**

By Genoscythe

Chapter 5: Healthy Exorcising

"You mentioned an exorcism," the reporter reminded Betters, eager to change topics. An exorcism sounded like it could make good copy, but half an hour ago, so did a piece on an elite paranormal investigation team.

"Yeah, that was when things started to pick up again. It was only a few weeks ago, if I remember."

"Did you get rid of Oscar?" Betters Jr. asked.

"No way. An exorcism wouldn't do shit to Oscar. It was a teenage girl in some weird state like Virginia or Maine or something. She got possessed by a family heirloom, and the padre working on her needed a replacement."

"Replacement for who?"

"The young priest. Jankowski knows – knew – the details."

The cameraman on Betters Jr.'s right, the one who had been so fidgety the whole time, finally gripped the reporter on the shoulder.

"Can I talk to you outside?" The crewmember whispered forcefully. The reporter excused himself and the cameraman as they left the room. Betters Sr. now focused on the last remaining cameraman, who felt terrified facing the Commissioner alone.

"Say, what's your name?" Betters asked in an off-set voice.

"Uh…uh…"

"Uh-uh, huh? What's your favorite color, Uh-uh?"

"Blreen," the cameraman designated Uh-uh quipped as the life drained from his face.

"What kind of sports do you like?"

"Socc – base – football basket."

"Got a girlfriend, Uh-uh?"

"Essir."

"Are you well hung?"

Just outside the door, reporter and crewmember were engaged in a two-man huddle.

"Okay, is it like 'bring your kid to work' day, or something?" The cameraman asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, there's this little girl that keeps screwing up my shots. You know, making weird faces and stuff."

The reporter's eyes narrowed. "I didn't see a little girl."

"Seriously? She was wearing a red – kind of a blood red – dress. It was really distracting."

"That doesn't make sense," Betters Jr. muttered. "There was no little girl in a red dress in there. It's a small office, I would have seen her."

"Well, let me show you." As the cameraman reached for the door, it swung back and knocked him on the head. The other cameraman was already halfway down the hall by the time Betters Jr. knew what was happening.

"What the _hell _did you do to him?" The reporter demanded once they were back inside the office.

"You'll thank me later," Betters said smugly. "He wasn't cut out for journalism. Now, can we keep going? I'd like to check up on my two surviving agents soon."

"Wait…" The one surviving cameraman hissed. "She's gone."

"Who's gone?" Betters grunted.

"The little girl." The cameraman pointed to a small red mark on the wall, and the reporter examined it.

"It says 'o…m…g…bloodstain'?"

"Was it a ghost?" The cameraman asked mutely. "Maybe that trash compactor thing psychoprojected itself in here."

Betters chuckled. "Not a chance. Oscar's butch. Ain't that right, Oscar?"

_"Feed me, Betters!"_ A deep echo reverberated through the walls.

"Okay, now shut the fuck up. I'm doing an interview."

_"Hello mom!"_

"Forget it. Just get to the story," the reporter barked. He turned to the cameraman. "How much memory do we have, Rob?"

"Still got a gig, but I'm running low on battery. We'll just have to switch to audio when it runs out and loop the earlier shots."

"Fine. I don't care if he looks like a freakin' Japanese cartoon, we're getting all of this interview."

"Uh…why?" Rob whispered confidentially.

"Because there may be something good yet," the reporter quipped, not too quietly. _There's gotta be._

"Well, you're gonna like this," Betters said, reaching in his desk for a snack but coming back empty. "Get me a Snickers first. Vending machine's down the hall."

* * *

Much like Jin had, Jankowski adapted well to his new job. He learned to forsake all his military training in favor of the quick and easy way, though he still liked to bring an oversized weapon or two on the few missions he had undertaken. Every now and then, he tried to get himself reassigned, but his attempts were always half-hearted, and he never actually went through the proper channels to request a proper military job. Betters believed it was because he had a crush on Jin, and he often reflected on the inter-office pool they could have had if the bet wasn't on the only other employees at the office. There was talk of adding a new member to the team (effectively replacing their pilot) but Jankowski couldn't figure out why.

There wasn't enough work to share between two members.

_Twang_. Jin stepped carefully into the shooting gallery, eyeing Jankowski and making sure she kept an object between the two of them. You never knew where an experimental weapon's bullet would go, and sometimes even an object wasn't enough.

_Twang_. "Fuck, look out!" Jin dove behind a counter, and part of a sword spun over her head. "You okay?"

"Yeah," Jin affirmed. "Stop shooting for a second." She warily traversed the shooting gallery, occasionally tripping over sword bits or gouges in the floor. Jankowski turned to greet her, waving around a bulkier and more refined version of the Highlander.

_That's not a very safe way to handle a gun, _Jin 3 observed.

_He could shoot us on accident, or worse! _Jin 2 concluded.

_Run, Jin, run! _Jin 1 commanded.

Physical Jin screamed.

"Uh…what's the problem?" Jankowski asked. Jin ignored him and ran back across the target range.

"You almost shot us!" She cried from the other side of the room.

"No I didn't – the safety's on."

"Jankowski…none of the Highlander prototypes have had safeties."

"Oh. So what the fuck have I been flipping this whole time?" Jankowski turned the rail gun over in his hands, finding what he thought was the safety switch and flipping it in curiosity. "Huh. Straight…" Jankowski flipped the switch down and fired the weapon at the target. He scored his first hit, even though the sword still bounced off the metal target.

"What's the other one say?" Jin asked, curious.

"It says 'decap.' What the hell does…" Jankowski trailed off, flipped the switch back up, and fired it. The blade jumped sideways, bouncing off the floor and then the wall to angle back at the point man's throat. After he recovered, Jankowski looked back at all the broken swords that had been trying to decapitate him the entire time. "No wonder I can never hit anything with this piece of shit."

"Since it doesn't have a safety, just put it down."

"Do I have to?"

"It'll make us feel better."

With a sigh, Jankowski dropped the rail gun on the nearby counter. "What do you want?"

Jin walked slowly back across the target range. "We've got good news."

"You're shitting me."

"Not _just_ good news – the best news."

"I got fired for not washing my hands in the bathroom?" Jankowski asked hopefully.

"No. Eww. We got a _real_ call!"

"A _real _call?"

"Yes!"

"A real _call_?"

"We know!"

"_A _real call?"

"Just one, Jankowski."

"Like…something _important_ is happening?"

"What we were made for," Jin replied. "A serious paranormal threat."

"Hot shit! Gimme the details." Jankowski rushed – unthreateningly – to Jin's side. She jumped anyway.

"Calm down. We'll go over the basics on the way to the briefing room." Jin beckoned the point man out the door and down the hall. Jankowski wondered vaguely if he would finally have a use for the Turbo Lover.

"We're not sure how, but this girl down in Oregon was possessed by some kind of demon," Jin began.

"_What _kind of demon?" Jankowski interrupted.

Jin flipped through some papers tucked in her arms, most of them blank and simply filling up the stack. Finally, she said "The girl says it's the devil himself."

"Damn, this _is_ good," Jankowski grinned. Jin glared at him.

"She's been doing all kinds of strange things, like crawling on the walls and spitting pea soup."

"Have they been feeding her pea soup?"

"We doubt it."

"Whoah. That _is_ strange."

"Right, but there's a priest performing an exorcism as we speak."

Jankowski's face fell. "Oh. Then what the hell are we supposed to do?"

"The priest's assistant chickened out and ran for it. Incidentally, he fell down the stairs and broke his neck on the way." Jankowski chuckled, but Jin quickly slapped him. "We're sending you in to replace the assistant," she told him edgily, flipping more blank pages and coming upon the priest's profile. "You're ordered to do anything Father Meringue tells you to. If he says pee out some holy water, you'd better do it."

Jankowski sighed. "Will I get to bring any heavy weapons? That's my favorite part."

Jin's thin lips curled into a smile. "It's funny you should say that." They continued in anxious silence to the briefing room. _More presents from a bored defense contractor? _Jankowski mused. _Yes, please._

The two F.E.A.R. operatives entered the briefing room at a casual trot, but only one of them broke out into a full-on sprint at the sight of a crate in the far corner. It stood taller and wider than any human, with numerous warning labels in varying sizes, shapes, colors and languages posted on it. Betters stood beside it with a crowbar in hand, looking puzzled. He turned to Jankowski as the taller man ran up to the mammoth box.

"You open it, it's _your_ fucking toy," Betters snapped, shoving the crowbar into his hands. Jankowski was all too happy to oblige, swinging the metal bar into the front of the crate and yanking the entire cover off.

"It's heavy combat armor from Armacham," Betters explained to the speechless point man. "A little bit on the prototypey side, but what the hell?"

It was a suit of matte tan plates and Kevlar so thick the thing could stand up on its own. Its shoulders were both shaped like shields, as was its chest, gauntlets, knees, hips, and toes. The helmet, set far below the top of the shoulders, had a single camera lens sticking out. Even that had a hi-tech plated lens cap.

"I get…to wear this?" Jankowski stuttered.

"You're supposed to," Betters grumbled, shrugging. "But I dunno how the fuck you're getting in there."

Tentatively, Jankowski reached out and grabbed it by the waist. However, trying to move it out of the box was like trying to lift a tank with a pair of chopsticks. After Jin and Betters amused themselves watching Jankowski struggle with the heavy armor, they decided to step in and pull the rest of the crate apart.

"Now, this is a thank-you gift from Armacham for testing out the Type-8 on that La-Z-Boy recliner. Unfortunately, they decided to go back to finishing up the Type-7 and scrapped the whole Type-8 project," Betters told him.

"They didn't like that you never knew what the Type-8 was going to hit," Jin elaborated.

"No, I knew exactly what it was going to hit," Jankowski shot back, slightly miffed. "I just had to stand sideways."

"Whatever. For some reason, they thought you did a good job, so they gave us this. We don't have to field test it, or give it back, or anything."

"But we probably will…" Jin muttered under her breath.

"Did Jin already brief you?" Betters asked.

"We just told him to do whatever Father Meringue wants. That's what it says on the readout, anyway."

"Great. Why the fuck do we even _have_ a briefing room?" Betters spat. "I'm sending you in alone, Jankowski. Since we're dealing with an actual paranormal threat, I don't trust Jin's MPD near a demonic whatsit."

"MPD?" Jankowski gasped. "Like, multiple personality disorder?"

"That's what it stands for, son."

Jankowski leaned in confidentially. "Is that what all the plural shit's about?"

"Yeah, you didn't know?" Betters replied.

"I thought she was British."

Betters sighed. "She – _they'll_ be spotting for you in the helicopter. You need anything, bother them and not me." Betters trudged out of the room, and as he did, he said "Get packed. It's a long way to Montana."

"Oregon," Jin corrected him.

"You're the pilot now, sweetheart."

* * *

A shadow lumbered across the dark cobblestones, lurching as if forward movement were a great struggle. It was an hour when nobody walked the streets, and the haze of midnight chased after the mountain of Kevlar and armor plating as if hoping it would be led to something interesting. Which, in fact, it was.

The giant lurched into the haze of a streetlamp, stopping and staring up at the house in front of it. It stayed there, handbag swaying gently. And it stayed there.

_What the fuck are you waiting for, movie cameras? _A foul-tempered mid-western accent broke the silence.

"I'm so…damn…tired…" The monster gasped. "I feel…like I just carried a buffalo through a marathon."

_Well, break time's over. The exorcist is waiting._

Glumly, the behemoth forced its bulk across the courtyard and slammed its head on the door. It was too hard to lift an arm and knock.

* * *

Father Meringue had seen exorcisms before. Not fakers, either – although he'd seen those, too. He had seen what one evil spirit could do to a body, and that was what kept him going. He couldn't let these creatures have their way with God's children.

"What an excellent day for an exorcism," the teenager strapped to the bed growled, her voice unnaturally low.

Father Meringue raised an eyebrow. "You would like that?"

"Intensely."

"But wouldn't that drive you out of Linda?" Meringue asked the demon.

"It would bring us together."

"You and Linda?"

"You and us."

Father Meringue straightened, stepping back and bumping into the wall. Only it couldn't be the wall, because the wall was at least two feet away. Thinking it to be one of the demon's tricks, Meringue whipped around with a fistful of holy water.

"THE POWER OF CHRI – oh, I'm sorry." Meringue lowered his hands and his voice as the water ran down his new assistant. He almost looked demonic himself, with his massive armor and cyclopean helmet.

"It's cool. We tested bullets on this thing, and I didn't even feel the recoil."

"That is…interesting. Will you step outside with me for a moment, my son?"

"I can try, but it'll take awhile."

Awhile later, Jankowski and Father Meringue were pacing the hallway outside Linda's room.

"I wanted to explain to you…exactly what we are dealing with," the priest began.

"A demonic possession?"

"So you believe me?" Meringue raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, shit yeah. I've seen all kinds of possessions."

"Really?"

"Appliances, mostly."

Father Meringue's eyes narrowed reproachfully. "_Possessions _as in worldly goods?"

"No, no. Like, with the ghosts and the ectoplasm and all that. Turns out they're much easier for spirits to possess than people."

The priest shook his head. "I must say, I have never performed an exorcism on an appliance before."

"That's because we do it for you." If Jankowski weren't buried under a mountain of armor plating, Meringue would have seen him grin.

"Still, I must warn you. This is not the same. Linda is not possessed by a mere wandering soul. This is a demon, and he is a cunning enemy. We may ask him what is relevant but anything beyond that is dangerous. He is a liar. The demon is a liar. He will lie to confuse us."

"You're already confusing me…" Jankowski muttered.

"He will also mix lies with the truth to attack us. The attack is psychological, my son, and powerful. Don't listen to him. Remember that – do not listen."

Jankowski stood motionless.

"Son?"

The hulking armor jerked. "Huh? Wha?"

Father Meringue smiled. "You should perform admirably."

**End**


	6. Shouting at the Devil

_**F.E.A.R: Origins**_

By Genoscythe

Chapter 6: Shouting at the Devil

**AN: Since it's been requested, I can do one update per day if you'd all like. The thing is, the story is only about nine to ten chapters long (I'm not quite done with it yet) so if you want it to be over more quickly, then I'll update daily. However, if you all want it spaced out like it is, then I'll keep it that way.**

**Thanks for reviewing, and I hope you enjoy the rest of the story!

* * *

**

Jankowski yawned and looked down at the priest. For some reason, he was stumbling and leaning on one of the girl's bedposts.

"Dude…what's wrong?" he asked. The ceiling partially collapsed on his head, but he didn't notice.

"What do you mean?" Father Meringue cried. "The room is shaking like an earthquake!"

Jankowski glanced from the snarling girl strapped to the bed to all the rattling furniture, finally letting his viewing lens rest on the priest again.

"If you say so, padre."

"Pay attention! I need you to help me recite these bible verses!"

"Stick your cock up his ass!" The devil barked.

"Whoah. Gay," Jankowski snorted.

_"Jankowski, say the damn bible verses!" _Jin cried through the receiver in his helmet.

"Which ones?" Jankowski asked Father Meringue.

"You don't _know_?" he reprimanded.

Jankowski cocked his repeating cannon, an added feature that did nothing but look menacing. "I'm not exactly an altar boy, padre."

"Here! Take this!" Father Meringue stumbled forward, grabbing the immovable rock that was Jankowski's heavy armor and shoving a tiny book into his hands. After the priest and the soldier spoke their lines back and forth, occasionally stopping so Father Meringue could tell Jankowski how to pronounce certain words, the possessed girl fell back against the bedpost and started growling.

Meringue took his cue, and produced a vial of holy water. "Now, follow my lead."

Jin snickered through the receiver.

"The power of Christ compels you!" Father Meringue cried, throwing a handful of the blessed water onto the scarred teenager. The demon roared, and the straps holding her down were torn apart.

"Say it with me!" Meringue yelled over the noise.

"But it's not helping," Jankowski pointed out.

"Are you an exorcist?"

"No."

"Do you suddenly know how to perform an exorcism, then?"

"_No_. Look, it's all I can do to keep from stuffing a grenade down her throat. In F.E.A.R. we don't deal with spirits the same way you geezers deal with demons, and from my experience, words don't do jack shit. Sorry, padre."

The devil began floating above the bed, and an eerie calm crept over the room.

"Please!" Father Meringue begged.

"Fine…" Jankowski groaned.

"The power of Christ…"

"…compels you."

"Good. Now we need to do that about fifteen more times."

Fifteen repetitions later, Father Meringue was steadying himself against Jankowski's leg as another tremor shook the room. The possessed girl sank back to the bed, and Jankowski couldn't tell if that was a good thing or not. He was about to tie up the girl's hands again, but he realized that he would have to move around Father Meringue, and that wasn't possible in the heavy armor.

The priest himself bound the girl and sank against the wall. She still lay quietly, almost peacefully if she weren't so disfigured.

"Are you tired?" Father Meringue asked Jankowski.

"Well, I'm bored," he replied.

* * *

The priest sat, deep in thought, at the top of the stairs. Jankowski still didn't know how to sit down in the heavy armor, so he simply leaned against the interior of the suit. 

_"You nervous?" _Jin questioned.

"Not really," he responded.

_"Scared?"_

"Not in this armor."

_"But you're dealing with a malevolent spirit. A demon. Armor doesn't matter to them."_

"We'll see about that."

_"Jankowski, we want you to run some tests on the girl," _Jin asked.

"What for?" he shot back almost immediately.

_"Well, we've never really studied a demon before. When everything's all said and blown up, the only parts left are just harmless springs and chunks inscribed with pentagrams. You just proved that we don't know whether armor will do us any good in fighting demons. Find out for us, will you?"_

Jankowski sighed. "I guess. How?"

_"There's several test kits in your bag. We'll tell you how to use them."_

Excusing himself, Jankowski grabbed his handbag and shuffled into the girl's room. Normally, his breath would have solidified in the bitter cold, but with one of the world's most advanced climate control systems installed in his heavy armor, he only noticed the change in temperature through a slightly higher whine coming from his backpack. The possessed girl, to his surprise, was sitting upright on the bed, unrestrained but not attempting to escape.

Jankowski blinked, and suddenly the girl was an old woman.

"Dimmy…?" The old woman croaked in a hard-to-place accent.

"Nope. Name's Spen," Jankowski corrected her, moving to the side of the bed and ripping open the handbag. Among other, more deadly things, several clear plastic containers spilled out.

"Wait. You're Damian Karras, right?" The old woman said, this time in the voice of the demon.

"Nope. Name's Spen."

"Oh…" The demon paused, as if suddenly barred by a gigantic mental barrier. "What kind of a name is Spen?" it finally managed, albeit weakly.

Jankowski scoffed. "What kind of a name is Pazuzu?"

The demon was silent again, and as it digested this it shifted back into a bound teenage girl. "Touché," it conceded.

Jin guided the point man through several blood and pea soup tests, most of which turned out to be perfectly normal for a human. Even – unexplainably – the pea soup levels.

_"Well, this proves it," _Jin declared.

"Proves what?"

_"Either it proves that the demon is insubstantial, or it proves that she's making the whole thing up."_

"Okay, I saw her float off the fucking bed. Did she make that up, too?"

_"Well, it says on the report that she starred in a movie about an exorcism as a child. The production left her partially traumatized, so she _could_ conceivably be faking. _

"She's a pretty damn good actor if she can still float without special effects."

_"Right. So, it's the first one. Which means your armor will likely be a hindrance to you and not to it."_

"I'm not taking it off."

_"Why not?"_

"Because it's _badass_! I feel like a fucking tank."

_"Which you aren't," _Jin pointed out dryly. Jankowski was about to reply, but he looked up to find Father Meringue in the doorway. The old priest had a determined look in his eyes as he stared at the possessed girl.

"Ready for more, padre?" Jankowski asked.

"I believe so," Father Meringue answered. "The sooner we attempt to drive this unholy spirit from Linda's body, the easier it will be."

"Look, I gotta take a piss first." Jankowski got up and trudged to the door. As he squeezed past the priest, he gently patted him on the back and nearly killed the old man right there. "Save some of the exorcizing for me, eh?"

Ten minutes later, after Jankowski had unzipped, unlocked, unbarred and uncovered everything necessary to urinate through the suit but before he could actually finish, a wheezing scream echoed through the house. Jankowski shook himself off, spent five more minutes securing the literal and proverbial hatches, then burst hurriedly into the girl's room.

Father Meringue lay very still at the foot of the bed, with the possessed teen hunched over him. Jankowski moved as fast as he could to the spilled contents of his handbag, eventually hefting the Highlander over his shoulder and aiming it at the girl. If Father Meringue wasn't as dead as he looked, then Jankowski hoped to save him.

However, he couldn't help but hesitate firing on a young girl (which goes to show he would have never made it in Delta), and the pause gave her time to latch onto him.

"Hey!" he cried, whirling around and thrashing rather unsuccessfully in the giant suit of armor. "Don't take me! Get away from me! Fuck, don't take _me_!" A horrible wailing, like the sound of pigs being slaughtered, emanated from the girl and seemed to pour itself into Jankowski. The massive armored figure stumbled backward, crashing through the wall and pitching over the side of the house. It hit the convenient stairway below helmet first, flopping on its side and tumbling down one of Oregon's longest, most dangerous flights of stairs.

Even in the bulky suit, the figure's limbs flailed about wildly after each bone-crunching impact with the step below. Several passersby had plenty of time to stop and watch as the heavy armor crashed, one stair at a time, to the pavement at street level.

By the time it made its last wincing flop, a crowd had gathered that included policemen and paramedics. The police weren't sure if they were sent to help the thing or shoot it, and the EMTs had to have a group huddle on how to lift it onto a stretcher.

Miraculously, before anybody could decide on anything, the armored beast moved. First, it pushed itself up into a sitting position. Then, it ran a hand across its helmet. Then, it ran a hand around its rear. The helmet rotated from side to side, looked up and down the flight of stairs it had just descended.

The heavy armor laboriously got to its feet and exclaimed "WHOAH!" It turned to the stunned crowd. "Thank god somebody else saw that."

Jankowski hadn't felt so much as experienced the ride down, and it had been one of the most exciting things he had ever done as part of F.E.A.R. He almost wanted to run back up to the top of the house and do it again. Unfortunately, the suit suddenly went rigid, and the pale turquoise HUD on the inside of his helmet turned blood red. As an afterthought, a squiggly pentagram signed itself in the middle of Jankowski's viewscreen.

"What the hell?" he murmured.

"What the hell indeed," the familiar voice of Pazuzu growled, seemingly coming from all around him. "I aimed for the skinhead, but instead I got the suit." The heavy armor waved its arm, forcing Jankowski's along for the ride. "Well, it'll get the job done."

With that, the armor raised the Highlander, still clutched in its stiff fingers after the trip down the stairs. The crowd gasped, panicked, and tried to flee. The police, believing themselves to be dealing with a robot, opened fire without the mandatory and unnecessary "Freeze!". When it turned out that this failed to even catch its attention, the police dropped their weapons and ran for their patrol cars.

"Wait a second," Jankowski spoke quickly.

"What?" Pazuzu snapped.

"The safety's on."

The demon turned the Highlander over in its hands. "Huh. Son of a bitch." Casually, it flipped the switch from straight to decap. Jankowski badly wanted to chew on his nails, but the suit prevented him from doing so.

_Please don't kill me, please don't kill me…_he silently prayed. The demon aimed the Highlander at the nearest police cruiser and pulled the trigger. To Pazuzu's apparent surprise, the sword that emerged angled downward, bounced off the hood of the car, and flew back in the direction of the nearest and most exposed neck – which was his.

In the case of a normal human being, it would have been possible to dodge the incoming katana. In the case of a suit of armor weighing approximately the same as a pickup truck, it was far less possible. Lacking the ability or the foresight to move away from the sword's trajectory, the armor stood motionless as the katana plunged into its cyclopean viewing lens. The blade stuck through the muscular aid system, the sensory receptors, the main CPU, and the climate control processor all in one clean stab.

From the outside, the heavy armor didn't even wobble. It simply folded up under its own weight. The police took it as a sign that God wanted them to live, so they backed out onto the street and drove away. Several moments of uncomfortable silence followed, until the approaching clack of footsteps heralded a small Korean woman in a dark green uniform.

"Jankowski?" she cried, shaking the lump of Kevlar. "Jankowski, are you still alive?"

In response, one of the suit's arms raised slowly and laboriously, shoving off its skewered helmet and then flopping uselessly back onto the pile. Jankowski's face was beet-red and drenched in sweat.

"It's so fucking hard…to move…without the power on…" he wheezed. "And it's hot as hell. Get me out of this thing." Once he had crawled out of the suit, Jankowski took a look at the discarded helmet. The katana had stabbed straight through the circular tube, stopping barely short of where his head had been. It was so close, in fact, that Jankowski hadn't been able to see it when he was still wearing the helmet.

"Tell Armacham…" he gasped, still struggling for air. "They'd better work on that helmet design."

"Should we send it back to them?" Jin asked.

The point man kicked the heavy suit vengefully. "No. Let's feed it to Oscar. Just in case there's some demon left."

Jin raised her eyebrows. "Finally thinking logically, are you?"

"Yeah, I must've hit my head on the way down."

**End**


	7. Back to the Origin

**_F.E.A.R: Origins_**

By Genoscythe

Chapter 7: Back to the Origin

"Well, that was…better," the F.E.A.R. commissioner's son conceded. "I'm still having trouble believing _any_ of this – "

"Don't worry, I've got records up the ass to back all this up," Betters reassured him.

"Switching to audio," the cameraman droned, but he was thoroughly ignored.

"Are we done yet?" The team coordinator sighed. "I thought I just heard someone flatline." He pushed off from his desk, gliding on the wheeled chair toward a computer console in the back corner of the office.

"Wait!" The reporter beckoned, leaning over Betters's desk. "I still have questions about your new point man."

"Like what?" Betters kicked off the wall and returned to his previous position.

"Like what makes him so special. Like how he's apparently the sole reason Paxton Fettel was eliminated at all – nevermind the damage he still managed to cause."

"Alright, fine," Betters conceded. "But this is the last one."

* * *

Two-thirds of F.E.A.R.'s current staff occupied the briefing room, sipping mugs of delicious coffee and commenting on how terrible the coffee was. 

"So…does this thing get channels?" Jankowski asked Jin, pointing his mug at the huge briefing room monitor.

"I never tried it," she replied. Less than two days after the events in Oregon, Betters had hired a psychologist to come and analyze his unexplainable hatred for earwax. Instead of finding a cure for Betters, the doctor wound up prescribing Jin some medication at Jankowski's behest. Ever since she had begun taking the pills, she had been able to talk in the first person. It hardly took her any time at all to make decisions regarding what color to wear (since there was only one) and she no longer screamed when she saw someone wielding a pair of scissors.

"Those meds are really keeping the other Jins under control," Jankowski remarked, trudging across the room toward the monitor.

"What are you talking about?" Jin asked earnestly, glaring at him. "There's only Jin 1."

Jankowski halted and looked behind his shoulder. "Huh?"

"I mean…there's only one Jin," she corrected herself. Jankowski shrugged and began turning a dial. Nothing happened until, seemingly at random, an air horn honked loudly and the sprinkler system gushed torrents of water on them. Jankowski turned the dial again and it abruptly halted.

"Fucking hi-tech bullshit…" he mumbled, looking for something else to fiddle with.

"I heard Shogo retired the Highlander," Jin chose to pursue casual conversation, wringing out her ponytail in the process. "Nobody bought one."

"What, not even Scotland?"

"_Especially_ not Scotland."

"Well, did anybody finish those other prototypes lying around?"

"The Turbo Lover still has a lot of bugs, and the Angry Kitty MK-IV shorts out every time it tries to lick itself. On the bright side, Armacham's on their final revision of the Type-7."

"Great, the boring one…" Jankowski continued to mumble, flipping a switch and hearing the distant sound of toast popping out of a toaster. "What happened to that really cool thing, the one with all the spinning blades? I think you called it the Painkiller."

"You know, I'm actually not sure who gave it to us," Jin responded, and reflected on the question over a sip of coffee.

"Good news, everyone!" Betters exclaimed, marching into the briefing room with a handful of folders.

"No, it's not," Jankowski immediately shot back. "I swear, it fucking won't be."

"Well, maybe not," Betters gave in. "But it's good for me. We just got us a new point man."

"Are you kidding?"

"I don't kid."

"We don't need another point man! _I'm_ the fucking point man!" Jankowski stopped messing with the screen and stormed over to the Commissioner. "I thought we were replacing the damn pilot."

"It's a long story. I was gonna get a new pilot, but there was this guy in Delta who showed some promise. A demolitions expert. I thought 'hey, shit, we don't have one of those yet, do we?' so I tried to hire him. Paperwork was almost finished when we got our funding cut for new recruits."

"That's…strange," Jin remarked, sharing a look with Jankowski. They had just witnessed the most excessive waste of funding in history, in the form of a dial that popped all toasters in a two-mile radius.

"So instead I got this new guy. He came right out of training, with results like you wouldn't believe –"

"Whoah. You said They cut the funding," Jankowski interrupted, 'They' being the single or multiple government officials responsible for F.E.A.R.'s existence and upkeep.

"Yeah, that's right. But, see, They gave him to me for free." Even as Betters said this, he seemed to be thinking it over in his mind. "You're right, that sounds wrong. They specifically gave me this guy. I mean, his reflexes are off the fucking charts, but…They gotta know by now that this is all a joke, don't They? Giving him to us is like giving a Ferrari to a retarded baby – no offense, guys."

"None taken," Jin responded dutifully.

"Fuck you," Jankowski answered, but Jin anticipated this and spoke loudly to drown him out.

"So…any ideas?" Betters asked them.

"On why this incredible new recruit is being sent to where he's needed least? No. On why we're getting him for free or why They wouldn't let us have the demolitions expert? No. They've never exactly kept us in the loop, have They?" she put in.

"No, but I'm thinkin' They should start."

"When does he arrive?"

"Any minute now, but he's not much of a talker. I doubt he'll give us a good reason."

"Why don't you just call Them up?" Jankowski interjected thoughtlessly. Betters and Jin silenced him with a deadly look.

"You don't call Them, They call you," Betters told him. "I can send a request, but it'll take 'till the fucking new moon before we get an answer."

They weren't sure if he was really fast, really quiet, or both. They _were_ sure that now the room was occupied by four, and the newcomer had been leaning casually in the doorway for at least half a minute before anybody noticed.

"Oh…well, here he is!" Betters exclaimed, trying to cover up his surprise. "The new guy!"

"He's really bad with names," Jin murmured apologetically. The new point man strode into the center of the briefing room, turning to each F.E.A.R. member until he had looked over them all. Jankowski felt what little hair he owned stand on end as the point man stared at him. Not quite _at _him. More like _through_ him. Something in those eyes didn't add up. They scanned everybody in the room like little cameras, never lingering any more or less on a particular subject.

When he had finished acquainting himself with his comrades, just when the silence was getting unbearable, the new point man left as swiftly and quietly as he had come.

"What the fuck is this guy's problem?" Jankowski growled, playing the part of the territorial male.

"He didn't say any innuendos…" Jin breathed, playing the part of the swooning female.

"Well, I'm bored. If you need me, I'll be kicking the vending machines," Betters announced, effectively defecating on the script and writing his own role. He soon disappeared as well. Jin and Jankowski looked at each other once more.

"Did you get that same weird feeling I did?" he asked.

"I got the feeling that he's not a sexual predator like the rest of you point men."

"I'm _not _a fucking…nevermind. Think what you want. There's something going on here. That guy didn't even say 'hi'? Didn't ask what all the paranormal shit's about?"

"That's usually the first thing to ask…" Jin agreed.

"Didn't even make a _sound_."

"Maybe he was going to say something until he got a look at your face," she jabbed.

Jankowski snorted derisively, then remembered that he still had a cup of coffee to demean. He took a quick sip, then his face turned sour despite how it had remained steamy and rich throughout the last few minutes. "Fucking military rations. Would it kill them to use some _real _coffee beans?"

Jin took the cue, and drank again. "And it's so watery."

"I think that was actually from the sprinkler system, but good try anyway."

She set down her coffee mug and marched purposefully toward the door.

"Where are you going?" Jankowski asked.

"I need to test him," she answered. "To make sure he's not a pervert."

* * *

"I see you're pretty good with your weapon," Jin purred, leaning on the counter at the firing range. The new point man squeezed off two more shots at the metal dummy. So far, he had fired over ten rounds, and only made one hole. "_Really _good," she added, more astonished than seductive. 

The Point Man said nothing. He did, however, shoot again. The bullet made a strange humming noise as it skimmed through the dummy's head wound. Jin noted that it wasn't a perfect headshot, as she had expected from his unreal accuracy. The single spot that the Point Man had managed to hit at least twelve times was directly on the dummy's right eye.

"You know, you can fire at a different kind of target, if you like," Jin suggested suggestively. For effect, she unzipped her uniform to the collarbone. The Point Man said nothing, but for a fraction of a second he turned and, when he was back to shooting at his original dummy, a hole was burning through the left eye of another dummy.

_His reflexes are off the…freaking charts, _Betters had said. _Did he really just fire at the other dummy without me seeing it?_

"Alright, do you want me to have sex with you, or not?" She finally blurted. The Point Man said nothing. He didn't fire at the dummy either. Jin took a step back and fidgeted with her zipper, nervous that she might have pushed him to the limit.

The tension broke when the Point Man ejected an empty magazine from his pistol and reached for another one. Jin breathed a tiny sigh of relief.

"Well…good luck with target practice!" She told him, and walked away whistling contentedly. Jankowski was already waiting for her in the outside hallway.

"Maybe you need to test me?" he asked hopefully.

"Okay, I will. You just failed." Jin tried to continue to her room, but Jankowski stopped her. "Hey, what – "

"Just listen to me for a second, this is serious," the veteran point man spoke quickly. "Did you notice how he kept aiming for the eyes?"

"And hit it dead-on every time. Why the eyes?"

"I don't know."

"That's fascinating, Jankowski. I'm glad you stopped me to say that." Jin's tone was so dry, it was practically arid.

"Let me finish. It's a harder target to hit. And he hits it _every time_. Like making a headshot is too easy for him."

"So…what do you mean?" Jin asked exasperatedly.

Jankowski sighed, and looked back through the doorway at the new point man. If she couldn't see it yet, if she didn't understand that there was something fundamentally _wrong_ with this guy, then there was no point trying to explain. He didn't want to spoil it for her yet, because she had obviously taken a liking to him against all odds. "Nothing. Forget it."

"Can I leave now?"

"Sure."

Jin spun on her heels, and this time Jankowski stayed rooted to the ground. He glanced once more at the point man, scoring perfect hits over and over again. He didn't like it, and he was pretty sure it wasn't just because he was being a territorial male.

* * *

"This is Genevieve." 

"It's me. He's in."

"Ah…yes, Senator. There's a problem with the plan."

"What is it?"

"Before we started keeping Fettel sedated, a synchronicity event occurred between him and Alma. If we take him off his medication…"

"You said Origin wasn't an issue anymore. The mess was cleaned up."

"It is, Senator. I just worry that trying to get Fettel to telepathically contact his brother might cause another synchronicity event."

"That's impossible. You told me so. Alma is _dead_."

"…"

"Miss Aristide?"

"…Of course. There's no danger. I will continue with the plan."

"Good. Call me if there's a development on your end."

"Yes, Senator."

"I'll tell you if anything happens with the First Prototype."

Genevieve Aristide hung up the phone in her office, illuminated by the blinking red light of a missed call. It was a late night at ATC headquarters, and even the late shift janitors were gone. As she hit the message playback button, she thought, _I should have told him that I already sent a team to reopen the Vault…_ _But the reports must be right. She died after we cut off life support. A synchronicity event couldn't possibly – _

**You have (1) new messages. First message from…**Harlan Wade**. BEEP.**

Genevieve quickly shut off the answering machine. She didn't want another lecture from him. Not now. Besides, it was probably about resurrecting Origin, and she had already heard everything she needed to know on _that_ subject.

**End**


	8. The Big Jankowski

**_F.E.A.R: Origins_**

By Genoscythe

Chapter 8: The Big Jankowski

**AN: Yes, there's more. The main storyline is just about over, but after getting so attached to these characters over the course of writing this (and pretty much giving them life since most didn't have any personality to begin with) I felt like there was more to be said on the fate of Jankowski. Be warned, this section is even more improbable than the rest...

* * *

**

The reporter sat, dumbfounded, in his chair. The interview was over. The biggest scoop of his career turned out to be worse than Al Capone's Vault. At least Geraldo Rivera still managed to recover with his career and his mustache still intact. After the promise he had made to the editor about a mind-blowing exposition for the crisis in Auburn, it was doubtful that he could return empty-handed to anything less than a big stack of walkin' papers.

"That's not enough for a full story…" he murmured lazily. "All you know about him is that he's a good shot and he doesn't talk?"

"Well, he was only here for a fucking week until this whole Origin mess," Betters returned.

"But from the looks of it, you do_ nothing_ all day. Why couldn't you – "

"Exactly. I'm practically booked solid."

"Oh, lord…"

"The bastard never said a word. It's not my fault."

The reporter sighed heavily and leaned back. "Maybe I can put this whole thing into the newspaper. I could get a blurb at the most, and that's if I stretch out the exorcism part."

"Hey…" the cameraman began. "I'm picking up a weird noise. Come over here." While Betters Jr. moved to the camera, the F.E.A.R. Commissioner turned back to his monitoring equipment. On the video screen, a blinking 'audio only' label dominated the blue backdrop. However, underneath it were the words 'incoming signal: unknown origin.'

"Turn it up," the reporter commanded. After Rob the cameraman complied, a series of clicks and less identifiable noises rose from the camera. "That's odd…" he remarked. "It's only coming from the camera."

"Bad news," Betters interrupted, and his son could swear there was emotion coloring his voice. "That flatline earlier…it was Jin."

The reporter didn't know what to say. He had never met her, and now he never would. Still, he felt like he had gotten to know her through Betters's stories. It was a very delicate moral situation. Should he feel sad for the loss of someone who seemed to, by and large, hold the F.E.A.R. team together, or should he be indifferent – as usual – at the death of a stranger?

"Now…what I don't get is…" Betters continued on, muscling past his welling grief and getting back on task to distract his mind. "How come Jankowski's vitals are still okay? I thought the machine was just on the fritz, but…"

* * *

**Less than 24 hours earlier**

Spen Jankowski couldn't remember the last time he had fought against a human enemy. This was because that time had been never. After training, he had been sent straight to F.E.A.R, and that was the last Jankowski had ever known of a normal military unit. Now here he was, riding in a Black Hawk with men who could have easily been his comrades if he had decided not to flush a grenade down that possessed toilet.

He had just chased down a psychic army commander in charge of an entire battalion of super soldiers, only to find a half-eaten corpse and the knowledge that Jin thought the new guy was "pretty cute."

He was currently being shipped off to fight a splinter group that had taken control of a water treatment plant upriver of the Auburn district. A battalion of super soldiers. _Super _soldiers.

What was almost more unnerving than anything else was the lack of respect Delta had shown him.

"Hey, Ghostbuster…" one of the Delta soldiers beckoned. "What's the best way to kill a giant marshmallow man?" The others in the helicopter chuckled.

"Don't cross the streams," a soldier next to him whispered, causing more snickering.

"Fuck you," was the best thing Jankowski could come up with. He would have felt a lot better – and a lot wittier – if Jin were around. Unfortunately, she had opted to stay behind and investigate the body left by Fettel. "You know, I was training to be in Delta. I coulda been your commanding officer by now."

"What happened, did you decide to take over the family business instead?" The lamer the joke, the funnier it will be to a helicopter full of adrenaline junkies. As they all burst into laughter, Jankowski checked his SMG uncomfortably. The Point Man had only brought a pistol and a sub-machinegun with him, and Jankowski didn't want to look like he was overcompensating, so he took the same thing. Now, he regretted missing the chance to show off his hi-tech weaponry to the non-believers.

_"Cut the grab-assing, we're almost there,"_ Douglas Holiday, the Delta unit leader, spoke over the comm. link. He sat in the front of the helicopter, coordinating with Betters and the rest of Delta. _"Once you secure the LZ, meet up with the other team. Remember, their leader takes priority. Do not engage unless necessary."_

The helicopter jerked to a stop over a cargo storage area. "We'll be taking fire if we get any closer," the pilot explained.

_"Let's fuck shit up," _the other team leader suggested through the comm. link. Jankowski was all too ready to comply.

The LZ wasn't nearly as hot as advertised. It wasn't even lukewarm, but it was saved from being completely frigid when Jankowski blew up a rat. The squad leader motioned toward the front door of the water treatment plant, after having swept the entire storage area. Jankowski was the first to break down the door, as all the other soldiers were proceeding with caution.

He had long ago forgotten what things like 'suppressing fire' and 'incoming hostiles' meant. If one of the Delta soldiers had shouted it while he led the charge into the treatment plant, he probably would have treated it like a MHR (F.E.A.R. terminology for Mad Hobo Ranting, which they dealt with often).

The front door opened into a hallway that turned and shot off to the right. Jankowski followed it warily, looking into the offices on either side of the hall. Large windows afforded views into each, showcasing the carnage and discarded bodies that had taken up permanent residence inside. Jankowski ignored the bodies, and instead concentrated on the furniture.

A crackling filled the air, and Jankowski snapped his head to an office on the corner. A desk wiggled. Wiggled, and faintly glowed with blue light. Jankowski unhooked a grenade from his belt and hurled it with mindless abandon through the window, sending glass shards in a downward spiral that would had undoubtedly looked cool in slow motion.

Jankowski ducked, and the office exploded outward. Bits of the table flew through the open window, and the door tumbled off its hinges. The SFOD-D squad nearly jumped out of their combat boots.

"Who the _hell_ did that?" their squad leader barked, eventually working his way up to Jankowski. "Ghostbuster! What is your major malfunction, besides the obvious?"

"Uh…" Jankowski was at a loss for words. This was the kind of work Betters would congratulate him on, albeit from the safety of F.E.A.R. HQ. "Being too good at my job?"

"Too good…sweet Jesus, if you were in my squad I'd have your balls for target practice. What the fuck was that _for_?"

"Possessed table, man. It's my specialty."

"A possessed…"

"Yeah. That's why I'm here."

"You're…" The squad leader had to pace back and forth before his thoughts could organize. "You're gonna watch our six from now on. Watch our six for…"

"Malignant furniture."

"That. Just, for the love of God, don't take point anymore."

Jankowski nodded, patting the grizzled man on the back as he walked to the rear of the group. They moved on, and after they rounded the next corner, a Replica in a stealth suit peeled off the ceiling of the decimated office and flopped onto an upturned chair.

* * *

The bald F.E.A.R. operative sat glumly behind a pumping station as the sounds of battle raged down the corridor. SFOD-D had forbidden him to be anywhere near allied soldiers in combat. Which was just as well, because the realist in Jankowski told him that he would have been the first to die. He would have been that guy that forgets to duck, or the one who miraculously survives a shot only to be picked off while celebrating.

Jankowski didn't want to be either of those guys.

"Flanking!" one of the Replicas shouted over the gunshots.

"I'm out of ammo!" another one cried in an identical voice. Even Jankowski knew not to yell out what you were doing in the middle of a gunfight.

"We need backup!"

"Grenade out!"

_Boom_

"Shut the fuck up!"

More gunshots, then silence. More silence, then giggling that sounded suspiciously like it belonged to a little girl. Jankowski stood up guardedly, strolling out from behind a water tank. There was no word from his comm. link, but the Replicas had stopped yammering as well. He stepped cautiously into the hallway ahead, looking around for any sign of his comrades.

Another giggle, and the fleeting image of something red skipping around the corner.

"…is someone there?" Jankowski hazarded. If it was just a little girl, then what could he possibly lose?

His skin, he found out, as well as his muscles and his organs. Just around the bend, in a blood-spattered clearing, lay a twisted, gooey pile. Jankowski bent down and grabbed a piece of it, pulling out first an ankle, then a leg, then the rest of a gore-encrusted skeleton. He let it drop back into the pile.

"I ain't afraid of no ghosts…" he murmured to himself, not sure if they were the remains of Delta or the Replicas. He decided that he would have to kick some ass either way, and drew his SMG. The bald F.E.A.R. operative snuck past the corpses and approached the next corner. Before he had made it to cover, the report of slow footsteps reached his ears. No spirit he encountered before ever made footsteps, with the exception of one – and this didn't sound the same as that walking hat rack.

Feeling that he wasn't up to the task of fighting an enemy with legs, Jankowski set down a proximity mine and ran back in the other direction. He slipped on the blood pooling from the skeleton pile, careening into someone hiding around the last corner and smacking his head against theirs. Both fell to the floor, Jankowski lying on his back with the corpses and the stranger staggering forward before landing on top of him.

Paxton Fettel was the first to reawaken, five minutes later. Still sprawled on top of the bald man, he licked his lips tentatively. Sometimes, he tended to black out during a feeding frenzy. While he didn't remember exactly what happened after he had tried to lure the soldier away with psychically-projected footsteps, it was so very hard to remember anything these days. _Are the memories mine, or hers? _So_ very hard to tell…_he mused.

However, in tasting the blood on his lips, he gained a glimpse into the man's mind. It was definitely the blood of Spen Jankowski. Fettel noticed that the crimson substance was coating his eye sockets.

_Interesting…so I've eaten his eyes, _he thought. _Ah, Paxton, you wonderfully melodramatic bastard! This will certainly torment my brother. _At length, he got to his feet, but once he tried to take a step, he stumbled sideways. Fettel clutched his temple, wondering why his head hurt so much. Shaking off the dull ache, he melted into the shadows in search of aspirin.

Several minutes after Fettel's disappearance, Jankowski's body pushed itself up and shambled away, unconsciously in search of anything that might cure a concussion.

* * *

**Around 24 hours later**

Jankowski jolted awake, and promptly screamed. He screamed first because his eyelids were stuck together by what he assumed was blood. Then he screamed because he realized that he was dangling upside-down. Madly, he scrambled to wipe the goo from his eyes so he could open them. Once he had done so, a beautiful and startlingly close view of the harbor greeted him. Jankowski strained to see what he was hanging from, and discovered that his foot was caught on a spare anchor dangling off the edge of the docks.

His first reaction was to jerk free, but he stopped himself from taking a trip into the brackish water below by employing seldom-used common sense. Now suspended above the ocean by an anchor, without a clue or even a sense of direction, Jankowski began working his way back to the assault on the water treatment plant.

It was all going fine, until the fighting started. He remembered finding a bunch of skeletons, and running away from…someone. He felt a gash along his forehead, which had dripped blood into his eye sockets. Whatever he ran into in the hallway would have hurt a lot less if he had a full head of hair to absorb the shock.

He must have been unconscious for almost an entire day, because it now looked earlier than it did when the attack began. Jankowski didn't rule out the possibility of time travel, but he put that one on the back burner until he could exhaust the better explanations first.

So he ran into something, and wandered around the docks in a state of delirium for almost twenty-four hours? It won out against time travel, and he decided to hoist himself up the anchor chain and call Betters.

The ground under Jankowski's feet crunched the crunch of ashen debris. He didn't have to look far to find out why. Spreading out in front of him, stopping almost exactly at the edge of the docks, was a massive crater that used to be Auburn. Jankowski's first instinct was to call Jin and ask if she was alright, but her comm. line was dead.

He tried Betters instead, and came up with static again. Someone was screwing with him. The Big Jankowski didn't like being screwed with, not after all he'd been through. He felt he had earned some degree of immunity to screwing. Trial by sewage, and all that.

Jankowski sighed in front of the burning city, and plotted his course back home. He knew the way by now.

**End**

**AN: Just for the record, I am _not _cool with Timegate for killing off Jin in Extraction Point. Hell, I practically made her my own character. However, I hate messing with canon, so dead she stays. I can do the things I'm doing with Jankowski because Monolith left his death so delightfully open-ended. Unfortunately, there's only one chapter left, so my time in the F.E.A.R. section is almost up. I'm trying to cut down on fanfics, so I won't write a follow-up unless I feel like I absolutely have to. That's all, until next time. Thanks for reading so far.**


	9. Epitaph

_**F.E.A.R: Origins**_

By Genoscythe

Chapter 9: Epitaph

**AN: Sorry this took a little longer than the other chapters. I wanted to get the ending right, so I decided to play through Extraction Point again. That got a little tedious, playing just to get to the ending, so I wrote it from memory instead. I'm sure nobody will mind or even notice that it's not verbatim from the game, but that's largely why this chapter was delayed.

* * *

**

"What is it?" Rowdy Betters Jr. felt compelled to ask. His father had gone silent, probably thinking about Jankowski.

"Nothing," he shrugged it off. "I'll bet they got him too."

"Isn't there _some_ way to contact them?"

"Okay, so you're our new communications expert?" Betters rounded on him. "You've figured out what the fuck's wrong with our equipment already?"

"I just think there'd be at least one way, with all this expensive technology…"

"Well – hey, you smell somethin'?" Betters suddenly stopped and sniffed the air. "Oscar, I swear to God if that's you…"

_Not me, Betters! _Oscar reverberated.

"Huh." Betters obliged a dire need by his head to be scratched. It had been a long time since the Commissioner had been in the field, but the smell contained some of the distinct qualities of blood – and that was something you never forgot. But there was no blood in sight, and nobody else in the base with them unless the cameraman that had ran away didn't manage to find the exit.

It was probably nothing. "You'd better get goin'. I've got some more ghost stories, but it looks like you don't wanna hear 'em."

_You did this to him…_a small voice whispered, echoing and re-echoing about the room. _You sent him there…_Betters felt his head getting itchier. The cameraman standing on the other side of the desk pointed sharply at the ceiling, his face white and quivering. Stopping his display of puzzlement, Betters looked up to see what had gotten the cameraman spooked.

The ceiling had become a pool of blood, and some of it was beginning to run down the walls. Reflections in the surface showed various scenes of battle, all of them centered on F.E.A.R.'s new point man being attacked by Replicas.

_I didn't want this for him…_the voice continued, setting off a flash of light in the viscous pool that silhouetted the images being displayed. _You made them fight each other…_

"Uh oh," Betters murmured. He recognized the voice now. "I told you guys about Alma, didn't I?"

"You mentioned her," the reporter breathed. "After all that about appliances and blowing shit up I didn't think it would be worth it to ask." His voice cracked, high and shrill, as the dripping blood reached the floor. "Figured it was a name brand or something. Hey you're the paranormal expert. What should we do?"

"We should leave," Betters told him. On cue, the door slammed shut. "Wow. Uh, Alma?"

_Yes…?_

"Since you seem to know, can you tell me what's been going on with the new guy?"

_They're fighting…_Alma whispered. _My children are fighting…_

"Okay, well, I'll help get him back if you don't kill us, alright?" Betters bargained slowly. "That's what you want, right?"

The air around them suddenly screamed, an anguished, distorted scream. Almost as if by the power of sound, the cameraman exploded into a cloud of red mist. Betters Jr. dove for cover as pieces of Rob splattered in all directions. Where there was once a living, breathing human, now hovered a little girl in a crimson dress.

Both of the room's surviving occupants stared hollow-eyed at the manifestation of Alma's spirit. They didn't know this, but they were looking at Alma's _good _side. Her bad side, the body that had been locked up and tortured for years, was scuttling through air ducts all across the city and killing indiscriminately.

The difference was that her bad side killed for revenge, and her good side killed to protect her children.

"Hey!" somebody yelled from the other side of the door. Alma swiveled about quizzically. A heavy impact knocked the door off its hinges, and as it fell, Spen Jankowski was revealed with his thumb on the trigger of a gatling gun pilfered from the armory.

"Compel _this_, bitch!" he snarled, squeezing the trigger and pouring bullets into the office. Blood from the walls flew everywhere, coating the two Betters' as they ducked under any available shelter. Alma jerked at each shot, fading in and out until she was little more than a faint outline. The ammo drum had run dry anyway; Jankowski tossed the gatling gun to the floor and drew a shotgun out of his pants.

"I dunno what you did with Jin, or the new guy, or the whole fucking city…" he began, advancing slowly on the withering ghost. "I don't even know how to really kill a ghost. But I'll be damned if that's gonna stop me from trying." He fired the shotgun, ripping through Alma and causing a gout of blood to bloom from the far wall. Jankowski pumped it with one hand, and pulled the trigger again. The spirit shrank away, and more blood fell to the floor. He pumped it a third time, still advancing on Alma.

His last shot completely evaporated the specter, and as she disappeared, the ceiling returned to normal. The blood on the walls remained, but without a source it started to thin.

Jankowski pumped the shotgun again, just for effect. Betters Jr. and Sr. got up slowly, not sure who had just saved their lives or why they were wearing Jankowski's skin.

"Holy shit!" the Commissioner exclaimed. "It's you!"

"I heard her all the way on the other side of the base. I saw what she could do back at the water treatment plant, so I decided not to take any chances."

"Is that the Turbo Lover, that thing shoved in your pants?" Betters Jr. asked, matching the gun with the description he heard from Betters.

"Yeah, I'm not just happy to see you," Jankowski returned. "Wait, who _are_ you?"

"Rowdy Betters Jr." The reporter held out his hand, which Jankowski was reluctant to shake because it was covered in blood. Betters Jr. understood, and he retracted his hand, shaking off the dripping gore in the process. "I'm a reporter," he clarified.

Jankowski shot a glance at the Commissioner, who shrugged. "He wanted to do a story on F.E.A.R. to go with the Auburn coverage."

"Explain to me what the fuck's happened since I've been gone," he began slowly. "There's little creepy ghost girls running around turning people into skeletons, there's a big hole where a city used to be, and apparently you've procreated sometime in the past, and that kinda scares me more than anything else."

Betters gave him the short version – that the new point man had pursued Fettel, alone, all the way across town, fought up and down ATC corporate headquarters, uncovered a secret underground research facility and subsequently blew it up. Before the dust had settled, the F.E.A.R. team's rescue chopper went down and all communications had been lost for several hours.

The only thing they knew, beyond that, was that Jin had been killed sometime in the aftermath, and the psychic girl behind the whole incident was still at large.

Also, it was just a drunken one night stand that took a turn for the worse when their rubber broke. Jankowski was very relieved to know that the spreading of the Betters gene pool had been largely accidental, but it still didn't change the fact that there was more than one person in the world with the name 'Rowdy'.

It also didn't soften the news of Jin's death.

"How do you know?" Jankowski needled them.

"I've been checking the life support monitors. She's dead, Spen."

"Maybe that little girl's just fucking with you – "

"She's _dead_, Spen."

"Well…" Jankowski paced the room helplessly, inadvertently crunching what remained of Rob's skull. "Shit!" he hissed. "What – what about the new guy? Is he still alive?"

"Yeah, but I dunno what condition he's in," Betters replied.

Jankowski cocked his shotgun again. "I'm gonna save at least one person today."

"Are you kidding?"

Jankowski fixed him with a level gaze. "I don't kid."

Betters scoffed. "Yes, you do. That's my line."

"I just wanted to try it out."

"Well, it doesn't fit. Don't go killing yourself just because you're mad about Jin," he warned. "She was with F.E.A.R. longer than anyone else, but I'm not letting it get to me."

"That's because you never cared about her," Jankowski pointed out.

"You're absolutely right, but still…" Betters had to fish around for the right way to end that sentence. "I'm not a heartless bastard."

"Prove it."

Betters sighed. "Alright. I'll help you get the new guy back."

Jankowski pumped the shotgun in excitement once more, and they gathered around Betters's desk for an attack plan. They were all laboring under the false assumption that Jankowski did, in fact, know how to kill ghosts.

What the three men had just witnessed was one of history's greatest coincidences. At the moment Jankowski first opened fire with his gatling gun, Alma's spirit started gravitating back toward its body. The two had been separated for too long, and to correct the spatial anomaly, her soul was being forcefully ripped out of F.E.A.R. headquarters and transported to the morgue under Auburn Memorial Hospital where her body lurked.

Her spirit resisted – still hell-bent on vengeance – and its struggle made it appear as though it were being riddled with bullets. Jankowski's final shotgun blast passed harmlessly through it just as the last of her soul drained away, and it looked to all concerned as if this had been the nail in the proverbial coffin.

Firing a shotgun at a ghost could have worked if Hollywood theatrics were involved, which was probably why they immediately believed it. However, the plan they eventually laid out consisted of giving Jankowski as many guns as he could carry and dropping him into occupied territory to lay the smackdown on anyone and anything between himself and the Point Man. Unless every single one of his encounters came with a perfect coincidence, he would be dead faster than Douglas Holiday could say "Hey, what's this thing on the ground?"

However, a tiny ray of hope existed as Alma's two halves combined and she was unable to continue blocking radio transmissions into the city. Betters's computer began radiating static, which slowly congealed into identifiable sounds. A moment later, the Point Man's camera feed clicked on and displayed a hospital morgue in the bottom corner of the monitor.

"Hey, he's alright!" Betters exclaimed. Jankowski pumped his shotgun in tentative hope. Immediately, Betters called up SFOD-D coordinator Shepherd, who filled them in on the situation.

_"We've got a Black Hawk en route to Auburn Memorial," _Shepherd explained. _"The surviving Delta forces set it up as an extraction point. Where's your man now?"_

"He's in the morgue," the F.E.A.R. coordinator relayed. He gave instructions to the Point Man, and watched with palpable relief as the camera feed showed him boarding an elevator and taking it straight to the roof. The cables didn't snap, the lights didn't flicker, the elevator didn't stop at the wrong floor. It was the most incredible thing Betters had ever seen before. Jankowski pumped his shotgun in disappointment, realizing that he wouldn't get the chance to use it now.

However, as soon as the Point Man ran out into the setting sun, a host of Replicas burst out of every opening on the hospital roof. He burst into action, running to the nearest pillar so quickly that it made the camera feed look like it was on fast forward. The three men huddled around the tiny computer screen stood in silent awe as the Point Man dispatched every clone soldier thrown at him. He even managed to ignite several explosive gas tanks, something that made Jankowski very jealous.

In no time, all the Replicas were dead (including a heavy armored one, wearing a much-improved model to Jankowski's prototype) and the Point Man was running for the helipad. SFOD-D's chopper had just landed, but as soon as he reached the open doorway, it…exploded.

"Oh, COME ON!" Jankowski bellowed, throwing down the shotgun and slamming his fist against the table. "What the fuck, man? How did that even _happen_?"

Betters Sr. and Jr. were too dumbfounded to answer. They merely watched as the Point Man picked himself up off the floor and hobbled, lifelessly, to the helipad where rescue had been swiftly replaced by a burning wreckage. It was no doubt the work of Fettel, but the camera was unable to pick up his telepathic conversations so it was hard to be completely sure.

If it had been Fettel, the psychic commander already escaped. The Point Man was now alone on the helipad as he stumbled to the railing and gazed at the smoldering cityscape. Jankowski picked up his shotgun so fiercely that he forgot to pump it.

"That's it. I've had enough of this. If Delta can't do anything right, then I guess we have to."

"Did you…just see the helicopter explode?" the reporter murmured slowly, not turning away from the monitor.

"Yeah. I don't care. This has gotta stop sometime, and I'm gonna make it stop now." Betters still had not said a word. "Are you still with me?" Jankowski asked him.

At length, Betters turned around and looked at him. "Do you know about the secret tunnel?"

"The one that leads to the basement of First Escrow Amazing Real-estate?"

"That's the one. It's not too far from Auburn Memorial. With enough guns, you might be able to make it."

"I'll take my chances," Jankowski muttered as he headed out the door. It didn't bother him that he still knew nothing of fighting a real enemy, or that the closest he had ever come to a firefight was unwittingly using a flamethrower to combat a possessed gasoline stove.

He felt a little possessed himself, possessed by determination. The only reason he never really tried to get away from F.E.A.R. was because he had held onto the hope that he and Jin could get together one day. Alma had taken away that hope, and – quite frankly – it pissed Jankowski off. The moment he stepped back out into the wrecked city, laden with weapons and tactical gear, he believed determination would be enough.

**The End**

**AN: Thank you all for reading this story, and special thanks to those who left reviews! No, I'm not going to make a sequel. As much of a cliffhanger as this is, I honestly don't know where I would go with a sequel. It's probably best for you to use your imaginations anyway. Aaand with that...I'm off!**


	10. Obligatory Mysterious Phone Call

_**F.E.A.R: Origins**_

By Genoscythe

Obligatory Mysterious Phone Call

"There's been a development, Senator."

"What do you mean?"

"Fettel is alive. We don't know how, but it's possible that Alma has reanimated his corpse."

"Sweet mother of God…I thought you had the situation under control."

"It gets worse, Senator. Fettel has trapped the First Prototype in the remains of Auburn. All rescue attempts have failed thus far."

"We worked so hard…"

"There _is _one thing, Senator."

"What, more?"

"An operative from F.E.A.R. is making his way through the city, apparently heading for the First Prototype."

"An operative from what?"

"F.E.A.R. You know, the front organization we used to test the Prototype?"

"Oh, them. Just ignore it. Keep trying to recover the Prototype."

"But he's made astonishing progress, sir. We shouldn't rule out the possibility that he might _succeed_."

"Okay, but we can't leave it up to a guy who thinks he's some kind of paranormal expert to get our man out. You do your part, and we'll wait and see how this what's-it-called – "

"F.E.A.R."

" – handles itself."

"That _is _what we're good at."

"Letting other people do all the work for us?"

"Yes, sir."

"Of course. This is politics."


End file.
